Contenu du sommaire

Jacques Testanière : Crisis and revolt in High School. This study aims at analysing the changes that have come about after the May-June 1968 events in the opinion of the students of anomic high schools, and the determining whether Faure's Reform is an adequate response to their expectancies. By means of a questionnaire administered in May- June 1969 to 743 students in the eleventh and twelfth grade, and of series of interviews of parents and teachers, the author shows the distribution of opinion in relation to the pedagogical innovations and the differential effects of the crisis according to the social origin of the students. Faure's Reform did not operate a new educational consensus, and the limited or marginal reforms applied in the school system are not adequate to solve the crisis. The process of disenchantment towards school following the first symptoms of anomie and the 1968 events only gave birth to a set back to the so-called order; the diverging interests of the students, as much as the lack of common perspectives, are not opposed to the transformation of spontaneous outbursts of revolt into a movement of school revendications connected with and related to a social movement.

Victor Karady : College of Education Graduates and other teachers in the Gay Nineties. Remarks on the social origin and achievement in an intellectual profession. Some results of a survey in historical sociology dealing with the differential dynamics of social selection (measured by the place of birth and father's occupation) and occupational achievement (measured by the achieved scholar status at the end of the career) of the French teaching staff from 1900 to 1914. A secondary analysis of the data from M. Gérard Vincent's study on a representative sample of teachers and their comparison with the data given by the author concerning the occupational elite (the alumni of the College of Humanities teaching) enabled an elaboration of several series of objective and comparable indicators: some of them deal with statistical equal teaching opportunities and differences by teacher's social class of origin, according to their cultural and economic achievement and their urban or rural housing, and to a combination of the categories of variables; the other indicators reveal a connection between achievement and social origin. The cultural heritage of the groups is much more of a determining factor in having access to teaching profession and their economic capital. Teaching is a restricted path to social mobility for lower classes. This social environment is being changed mostly by the educated middle class whose rural members attribute relatively more value to profession than their urban counterparts; but College Education is mostly made up of urban groups, with preference to Paris. Professional achievement of the teachers is, at every level of school selection, a function of the family's social status in social Hierarchy.

Guy Vincent : Genesis and structure of the French primary school system. A review of the history of the French school system, its genesis and successive transformations seen from the point of view of the primary and upper-primary school system, shows a constant dualism connected with the persistence of social division of labor, throughout every, however seemingly unifying reform, and up to the successive shifts of ideology of an only school system. But if our school system has suffered instability for over a century, if it has proliferated in various branches, some of which seem to overlap, it is due to the necessities of the economic development even though it may seem contradictory.

Philippe Fritsch et Christian De Montlibert : A plurality of disadvantages: a study of the Housework Vocational Schools' students. Officially fulfilling a role of housework, family and social education, these vocational schools constitute an institution for the recovery of « failures » of primary school. However a survey of these vocational schools' students reveals that they are made of girls who are burdened by a plurality of social and cultural disadvantages which manifest themselves, first by their successive failures in primary schools, then by their relegation on a marginal educational institution, and finally by their being fated to a limited social and professional future. It is as if their experience in housework vocational schools prepared the students for the lowest jobs and for an acceptance of their destiny. Therefore these vocational schools contribute specifically to the maintenance of social inequalities.

Jacqueline Chobaux : A study of the educational relationship. Within a research dealing with the influence of « modern » pedagogical theories, considered as a sociological fact, upon the structure and functioning of primary school, the author isolates the level of everyday pedagogical action, the most significant level when one studies the possible transformations. This pedagogical action is named « educational relationship ». After defining the component variables of this relationship the author describes the most adequate method in order to grasp the reality, i.e. the direct and systematic observation of teacher and student behaviour in the classroom. The author first describes the specificity of this approach, its pros and cons and then the method of collected data analysis. There are three distinctive levels of analysis: an analysis of the global structure of school activities, an analysis of the teacher-student basic relationship, an analysis of the teacher's and students' behaviour and their interaction. The author sets forth these categories of analysis at every level of analysis.