Contenu du sommaire

Jean-Michel Chapoulie, Dominique Merllié : The Recruitment of Secondary School Teachers : (I) The Objective Determinants of Entry into the Teaching Profession. On the basis of data about class origins and the post-primary studies of secondary school teachers who were holding positions in 1970 (these data were collected during two surveys : from questionnaires to a national sample and from semidirective interviews), and from various statistical data on the secondary and higher studies of different categories of persons with degrees from institutions of higher education, this article analyzes the objective determinants of the recruitment of secondary school teachers. It shows that this recruitment is explained by the actual organization of academic « networks » which tend to orient part of the best students from secondary schools toward the teaching profession through the intermediaries of the preparatory classes for the elitist schools and of general literary and scientific courses. Submitting to scholastic norms of orientation is particularly strong for women, on the whole, and for men coming from the lower middle classes and below. For men from other social classes, entry into teaching profession seems in general to be the product of relative scholastic success ? at certain stages in the cycle of studies ? which is not sufficient for letting them enter or continue in professional studies which lead to the most socially valued careers among the upper classes. This article also studies the differentiation of the means of entry into the two principal categories of secondary school teachers ? the agrégés and the certifiés ? as well as the manner in which teachers seem to have experienced the totality of the social trajectory which has led them into their profession.

Etienne Schweisguth : Noncommisssioned Air Force Officers' Attitude about Military Careers. The present study results from empirical research using noncommissioned officers in the French Air Force as subjects. The problem is to know whether these officers, who for the most part execute technical duties, have a certain « military mentality » characterized by their adherence to certain values. An analysis of nondirective interviews leads to the conclusion that the notion of « military mentality » has less to do with a value system which orients the subjects' actions than with a set of symbolic elements that the military institution values. The members of the institution are to recognize the legitimacy of these elements. A questionnaire has served to measure the non commissioned officiers' attitudes about the military. A multivariate analysis brings out two dimensions designated as « military mentality », which means a positive attitude with respect to the military as regards elements of this latter's symbolic system, and « professional mentality », which involves negative attitudes towards the military with regards to constraints that the latter implies. Although negatively correlated, these two dimensions are not simply opposites. The professional mentality depends neither on the subjects' sociocultural backgrounds nor on their positions in the Air Force. It mainly comes from their individual personalities, and is linked to the intention of having a short career and to a lack of satisfaction with the military. On the contrary, the military mentality is all the higher whenever the sociocultural level is low and the position in the Air Force is less advantageous. It springs, at least in part, from the phenomena of socialization and rationalization. It does not however reduce to a simple, conformist adherence to the military's symbolic system. It corresponds to an attitude which orients these officers towards long careers, which creates satisfaction with the military, and which is capable, if need be, of opposing determinants of an economic order. Although its effects are generally less strong than those of the professoral mentality, it is nonetheless remarkable that valuing the army as such manifests itself in this group which, by the way, is very close to a population of workers in the civilian sector.

Philippe Bénéton : On Social Mobility in France. This article analyzes French intergenerational mobility on the basis of a 1970 survey by I.N.S.E.E. At the start, the author lists those factors which limit the extent of such an analysis: the dubiousness of statistics, postulates about the social hierarchy, the unsurmontable obstacles created by genetic differences, the difficulties of cutting society up into categories, the absence of an unquestioned frame of reference, the disparity between the observer's view and the subject's feelings. He then comes up with the following propositions. (1) Social opportunities are very unequally distributed according to the category from which a person originates. (2) The fact that so few children from the underprivileged classes have any opportunities for rising does not exclude the risk that many children from the upper categories run of falling. (3) Mobility can be perceived very differently as a function of social position. (4) The existence of very unequal opportunities does not exclude a thorough turnover in most social categories from one generation to the next.

Guy Barbichon : Village and City Space in Children's Imagery : An Analysis of Children's Drawings. A thematic and structural analysis has been made of pictures drawn by children who are, on the average, six years old and reside either in a large urban building block or in a rural district. These pictures have as themes the village, the city and the habitat. Isomorphism and « ecocentrism » characterize the drawings of rural children who project, topologically and architecturally, the village onto the city. In their designs, the theme of the habitat ddminates. As opposed to city children, they also have as reference an extended space which is topologically complex. City children's drawings of urban and rural space are marked by the discontinuity of their images : their drawings of the city center around a commercial place (the supermarket), those of the countryside, around the natural places for leisure or picturesque farming scenes. Only city-dwellers invoke the model of the rustic farm. The absence among city-dwellers of a graphically composed space does not exclude the possibility of their drawing an extended social space which could be found in other ways.