Contenu du sommaire : Autour de 68

In May 1968 two film directors, Peter Kassovitz and Claude Otzenberger, were sent by the French Film States General to interview supporters of social and political order : Gaullist activists or followers, business managers, police trade-union officials, associations of people repatriated from Algeria, activists of the far right. However, they were not able to turn their pictures into full-fledge documentary films. Seven of their film documents are now preserved in Paris, in the Forum des images. These unfinished products are a useful new source to understand the motivations of the opposite forces in French society during the movement of 1968.

Four historians who were members of the editorial board of the French journal Le Mouvement Social are interviewed by three current board members of the journal about their biography, French social history and academic life in the 1960s, and the place of May 1968 in their life and in the life of the journal.

Founded in 1907 at the Congress of Stuttgart, the first International of Socialist Youths was rebuilt at the Congress of Hamburg in 1923 after the impact of the Bolshevik revolution and the great divides which followed. Areas of reflection and action for the ISY were primarily the protection of youth, education, propaganda and solidarity. In July 1929, the ISY had a spectacular demonstration of its strength as it brought together more than 200 000 members for its Congress of “red Vienna”. Here the young Socialists marched en masse shouting « never another war! ». The rejection of fascism and war provided a very firm basis for solidarity. But there were also strongly-felt differences, if not outright dissensions, between the more revolutionary (minority) Latin federations and the more reformist Scandinavian federations, who recovered the ISY leadership after the forced withdrawal of the Germans. However, unity was clearly the order of the day, as demonstrated by the last Lille Congress in July 1939. At this congress, the slogan “socialism means peace !” became most meaningful.

This article presents a model-type of the « unitary » institutionalized faction within the FEN teachers' union. Although a minority group, its solid presence in the union reveals its flexible identity. In the “unitary” faction, there exists a tension between the FEN agenda and its own priorities, which were once represented by the FEN-CGT. Even if, in granting priority to women and young people, it makes voluntarist claims, it still remains loyal to the pragmatism of the FEN agenda. Its characteristics include a distinctive organization and program of action as well as an hostility towards any overly rigid system of operation. Although it is a real union faction, it is nevertheless marked by a communist matrix. The interference of the French Communist party (PCF) varies according to the period as well as the views of the communist and non-communist teachers. Pacifist, anti-colonialist, it embraces the secular-republican ideology of its milieu, but still separates itself from anticlerical sectarianism. Far from embodying an alternate revolutionary union model, this institutionalized faction constitutes a strong-armed version of the FEN model.

In the 19th century, the education of the deaf-mute was an increasingly successful endeavor which developed mainly in Catholic congregations. However, it was not an institutionalized practice in that it lacked a legal framework as well as consistent regulations concerning the opening of schools, the hiring of teachers or the admission of pupils. Only the Institution of Paris, the oldest and biggest school, protected by the State since the Revolution, possessed the resources capable of stopping the institutional and pedagogical fragmentation of the practice. This double feature of the education of the deaf-mute – the dominance of Catholic congregations and the prestige of the Paris Institution – strongly shaped the reform efforts of the 1880s, which were not only pedagogical (general imposition of the oral method) but also institutional (developing a « special » curriculum in relation to « ordinary » public education).

In 1880 an international congress on deaf children's education was held in Milan. Among its resolutions was the declaration that the “oral method” was preferable to the “signing method”. This congress was the end result of a conflict between the two methods which had developed over the course of the nineteenth century. Two official French delegations were present : the representatives of the Ministry of the Interior and the representatives of the Ministry of Public Education. Although both were supporters of the oral method, members of these delegations clashed on other issues, and the final resolutions voted by the congress catered primarily to the wishes of the Ministry of the Interior. After this congress, the French government decided to implement these resolutions everywhere on French territory: henceforth sign language was no longer used in schools for deaf children; instead mainly speech and lip-reading were taught. The consequences of that decision can still be felt today: since sign language is no longer used in the schools, deaf children born to hearing families who do not practice sign language have no opportunities to learn it. Hence the number of sign-language users stagnated, and until the 1970s, its practice remained limited to the spheres of family and non-profit organisations. Since that period, sign language has started to develop once again in France.