Contenu du sommaire

Viviane Isambert Jamati : The extension of public education and « lower standards » in secondary education. Beginning with a vast survey on 9th grade students in public education, conducted by the National Institute for Professional Orientation, the author analyses the relationship, at the regional level, between the proportion of adolescents attending secondary school and the performance of these students. According to standardized tests, the students in the regions with higher schooling rates, who in fact, have been the object of little selection, contribute less than the others to the group which has the best performance rates. But if one does not stop at the very successful students, one realizes that there is little discrepancy between the average of both groups and that a non-selective school system has at least the advantage of raising the average standard of knowledge for the population as a whole; this superior average is more than a selective educational system would have produced.

Véronique Campion Vincent : Educational system and social mobility in Senegal. A thorough survey was conducted in 1967 in Senegal, with a study of the social composition of the student population acceding to secondary education that year. A comparison with the distribution of certain characteristics in the Senegalese population as a whole, and a study of their variations according to the present type of education followed by these students was made. Children whose parents reside in large cities, who work in a modern sector of the economy and ho have attended school, have a much better chance to get a secondary education than those in other groups of Senegalese society. The recruitment for different types of education is a socially homogeneous one. A comparison of the social composition of different ethnic groups acceding to secondary education shows that the ethnic group is highly associated with other social variables.

Yvonne Bernard : Social facts and aesthetical judgment. The behavior of every individual faced with a work of art does not depend only on his particular personality, but is conditioned by his social and cultural milieu. The analysis of the spontaneous choice made by 480 persons who bought reproductions in a Parisian art gallery shows the existence of social determinants which affect the choice made. A factor analysis of the correspondance between the painters chosen and the buyers, points out the conditioning action of each of these variables. The results indicates particularly, the determining role of cultural learning in the family environment.

Pierre Dubois : An example of causal analysis : the activity of the shop Stewart in industrial organizations. This is an application of the methods of causal analysis. An account is given of the activity of the shop stewart, by linking it, not to one causal factor, but to a set of interrelated factors, that is to say to the construction of a complex causal structure, and for that purpose the method of reduced coefficients of partial regression has been used. This method and the limits of its use are presented in detail. It is assumed that 10 variables influence the activity of the shop stewart; 5 correlations are significant, but for the regression analysis only 3 variables are used: a shop stewart is active if the Union in the firm in which he works is a strong one, if he participates in Union activities outside of the firm, and if he has a high professional status (the factors are ranked in order of decreasing influence). The A. has reintroduced the multivariant analysis in order to bring out interactions and to isolate deviant cases.

Joffre Dumazedier, Janina Markiewicz-Lagneau : Soviet Society: free time and leisure, 1924-1964. The U.S.S.R. is the only country which has data over the last fifty years, on sociological and economic research in time budgets and the use of leisure time. How have the nature of the problem, the hypotheses and the methods which have guided these successive surveys evolved? Three periods can be discerned. From 1920 to 1930, in studying the influence of the revolution, research on time -budgets in general and on leisure time in particular, stem from practical problems; the post-Stalin period studied is entirely dedicated after work. The sixties are striking because research in entirely dedicated to leisure time and the study of its structure. During these three periods, the Marxist concept of « relation » between work and free time, is the major basis for all Soviet research. While considerable change can be observed in the structure of the use of time for all social classes, certain differences (type of dwelling, sex) exist in the use of leisure time. The data used in this study are supplied particularly by the works of Strumilin (1923), Prudenski (1958) et Gruschin (1964) on urban workers.