Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T21:43:19.686Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

History in the Classroom An Undisciplined Subject

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2017

Laurence De Cock*
Affiliation:
Lycée Joliot-Curie, Nanterre

Abstract

This paper argues that a discipline taught in schools is more than a mere copy of scientific knowledge. It investigates the relationship between scholarly and pedagogic knowledge from the end of the nineteenth century, when the teaching of history was tasked with participating in the construction of a shared national culture. In fact, it is only by mobilizing tools from the social sciences that the complexity of history teaching can be understood. The repeated accusations directed at the teaching of history in schools therefore reflect a trite and hackneyed understanding of its nature and mission.

Type
Historical Research and History Teaching in Secondary Schools
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Joutard, Philippe, “L’histoire, une passion française,” in Historie de la France, ed. Burguière, André and Revel, Jacques, vol. 4, Choix culturels et mé (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 302–94 Google Scholar.

2. In 2012, Laurent Wirth, the inspector general who chaire middle-school curricula, was subjected to threats and insult of an anti-Semitic nature.

3. Arnaud, Pierre, “Contribution à une histoire des disciplin en forme scolaire de l’éducation physique,” Revue française d pédagogie 89 (1989): 2934.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Hamon, Christian and Lebeaume, Joël, “De la technolog de l’ingénieur en France de 1945 à 2013: contribution à l’é plinarisation,” Éducation et didactique 7, no. 2 (2013): 47–67 Google Scholar; is from p. 47.

5. Garcia, Patrick and Leduc, Jean, L’enseignement de l’histoi en France (Paris: Armand Colin, 2003)Google Scholar; Héry, Évelyne, Un siècle de leçons d’histoire. L’hi enseignée au lycée, 1870–1970 (Rennes: PUR, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Chervel, André, “L’histoire des disciplines scolaires. Réflexions sur un domaine de recherche,” Histoire de l’éducation 38 (1988): 59119 Google Scholar.

7. Bruter, Annie, L’histoire enseignée au Grand Siècle. Naissance d’une pédagogie (Paris: Belin, 1997)Google Scholar.

8. Patrick Garcia and François Pernot, eds., Lavisse: Le roman national comme patrimoine scolaire?, acts of a one-day workshop organized at the Château de La Roche-Guyon, November 15, 2014 (Paris: Éd. de l’Amandier, forthcoming).

9. Bruter, Annie, “Lavisse et la pédagogie de l’histoire. Enseignement de la représentation et représentation de l’enseignement,” Histoire de l’éducation 65 (1995): 27–50 Google Scholar.

10. This relationship has remained present throughout the evolution of the late nineteenth-century Pedagogical Museum into the National Pedagogical Institute (Institut pédago gique national, IPN), which was later to become, successively: the INRDP, the INRP (following the creation of the National Pedagogical Documentation Center or Centre national de documentation pédagogique) and, since 2008, the French Educational Institute (Institut français d’éducation, IFE).

11. Honneth, Axel, La lutte pour la reconnaissance (Paris: Gallimard, 2013)Google Scholar.

12. Develay, Michel, De l’apprentissage à l’enseignement. Pour une épistémologie scolaire (Paris: ESF éditeur, 1992)Google Scholar.

13. De Cock, Laurence and Picard, Emmanuelle, eds., La fabrique scolaire de l’histoire. Illusions et désillusions du roman national (Marseille: Agone, 2009)Google Scholar.

14. Durkheim, Émile, L’évolution pédagogique en France (Paris: F. Alcan, 1938)Google Scholar.

15. Harlé, Isabelle, La fabrique des savoirs scolaires (Paris: La Dispute, 2010)Google Scholar.

16. For a selection of texts that have particularly influenced French thinking on this matter, see Forquin, Jean-Claude, ed. and trans., Les sociologues de l’éducation américains et britanniques. Présentation et choix de textes (Paris/Brussels: INRP/De Boeck University, 1997)Google Scholar. See also Deauviau, Jérôme and Terrail, Jean-Pierre, eds., Les sociologues, l’école et la transmission des savoirs (Paris: La Dispute, 2007)Google Scholar. French authors will often borrow the English term “curriculum” because of the broad scope that it offers for discussing not only programs of study (the formal curriculum) but also the resources and practices mobilized in classrooms (the real curriculum) and the potential invisible effects of these two aspects (the hidden curriculum). The present article deals only with the formal curriculum, the equivalent of the French programme scolaire .

17. Isambert-Jamati, Viviane, Les savoirs scolaires. Enjeux sociaux des contenus d’enseignement et de leurs réformes (Paris: Éd. Universitaires, 1990), 41 Google Scholar.

18. Bourdieu, Pierre, On the State: Lectures at the Collège de France 1989–1992, trans. Fernbach, David (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014), 98 Google Scholar.

19. Clément, Pierre, “Réformer les programmes pour changer l’école? Une sociologie historique du champ du pouvoir scolaire” (PhD diss., University of Picardie Jules-Verne, 2013)Google Scholar.

20. Laurence De Cock, ed., “Faire de l’histoire-géographie-éducation civique à l’école primaire, quelques pistes de réflexion,” special dossier, Aggiornamento hist-geo, 2011, http://aggiornamento.hypotheses.org/362.

21. The archives of the DGESCO relating to the revision of the curricula for all school subjects since 1990, comprising fifty-eight items (reference code 20120058), were recently deposited in the French National Archives.

22. The “core knowledge and skills” policy was promulgated in 2006. It consists of a set of skills that all pupils should have mastered by the end of compulsory education. Designed according to a cross-disciplinary logic structured by “pillars,” it is, at least theoretically, meant to serve as a normative framework for the different subjects taught.

23. The introduction of extra-European civilizations as study topics was presented as a veritable innovation by both the designers of the curriculum and their detractors. In fact, these civilizations had already featured on the high-school curriculum in the 1960s and the middle-school curriculum in the late 1970s.

24. Callon, Michel, “Éléments pour une sociologie de la traduction. La domestication des coquilles Saint-Jacques dans la baie de Saint-Brieuc,” L’année sociologique 36 (1986): 169–208 Google Scholar.

25. Lantheaume, Françoise, “L’enseignement de l’histoire de la colonisation et de la décolonisation de l’Algérie depuis les années trente: État-nation, identité nationale, critique et valeurs. Essai de sociologie du curriculum” (PhD diss., EHESS, 1992)Google Scholar.

26. Lantheaume, , “Solidité et instabilité du curriculum d’histoire en France. Accumulation de ressources et allongement des réseaux,” Éducation et sociétés 12, no. 2 (2003): 125–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Choppin, Alain, “Le manuel scolaire, une fausse évidence historique,” Histoire de l’éducation 117, no. 1 (2008): 7–56 Google Scholar.

28. Bonnivard, Ève and Lefebvre, Barbara, Élèves sous influence (Paris: L. Audibert, 2005)Google Scholar.

29. Dauphin, Odile, Janneau, Rémy, and Perrin, Nicole, eds., L’enseignement de l’histoire-géographie de l’école élémentaire au lycée: vecteur de propagande ou fondement de l’esprit critique ? (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009)Google Scholar.

30. Gingras, Yves, ed., Controverses. Accords et désaccords en sciences humaines et sociales (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2014)Google Scholar.

31. Badré, Vincent, L’histoire fabriquée? Ce qu’on ne vous a pas dit à l’école (Monaco: Éd. du Rocher, 2011)Google Scholar.

32. 1969 saw the introduction of “early learning” activities in primary schools. Driven by active pedagogy, they grouped together all subjects except mathematics and French, thus breaking down the separation between them.

33. Chambarlhac, Vincent, “Les prémisses d’une restauration? L’histoire enseignée saisie par le politique,” Histoire@Politique. Politique, culture, société 16, no. 1 (2012)Google Scholar, http://www.histoire-politique.fr/index.php?numero=16&rub=pistes&item=22.

34. In particular Dimitri Casali and Jean Sévillia, whose books sell in the tens of thousands.

35. Dobry, Michel, Sociologie des crises politiques. La dynamique des mobilisations multi-sectorielles, rev. ed. (Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 2009)Google Scholar.

36. Assemblée extraordinaire du 3 avril 1938,” Bulletin de la société d’histoire moderne 9, no. 4 (1938): 1–2 Google Scholar.

37. Chartier, Anne-Marie, “Les disciplines scolaires: entre classification des sciences et hiérarchie des savoirs,” Hermès 6, no. 2 (2013): 73–77 Google Scholar.