Drawing inspiration from the sociological tradition of Chicago, Jean-Michel Chapoulie explains the rise of forms of prolonged schooling in France. It accounts for the growth in educational provision by not only being interested in public policies but above all in the functioning of local institutions.
“ Is it over ? Never. Tomorrow will discover yesterday’s shortcomings » (p. 13). It is with this enthusiastic vision of Ferdinand Buisson, an ode to past and future republican educational work, that Jean-Michel Chapoulie’s latest book opens, devoted to the development of schooling in France in the XIXe And XXe centuries, in the teachings placed under the supervision of the State. We must undoubtedly go back to the founding work of Antoine Prost, published in 1968, or to the volumes published under the direction of Louis-Henri Parias in 1981-1988, to find a work which so broadly embraces this major phenomenon in the history of French society. Taking advantage of the numerous works carried out in this field since the 1980s, the author places here primary education and secondary education – which have long focused the attention of researchers – within a larger whole where the various forms of extended education find their rightful place.
In this summation book, Jean-Michel Chapoulie reinscribes in a global perspective the original results of the numerous researches that he has carried out, for almost forty years, on this subject and on other related themes (history of social sciences and sociology secondary school teachers in particular). There we will find this fruitful articulation between historical methods and analyzes and a sociology which draws on the sources of the Chicago tradition. This is not, however, a simple compilation of previous works: from this monumental sum – 614 pages – an overall vision clearly emerges.
To understand the phenomenon of schooling, Jean-Michel Chapoulie retained three levels of analysis. The quantitative approach – nourished by first-hand knowledge of official statistics and their pitfalls – ultimately only occupies a restricted place in relation, on the one hand, to the study of the daily functioning of educational establishments, and on the other hand, to the study of national school policy and the movements of ideas which shape it. The whole is divided into four parts – twenty-one chapters – which are organized according to a plan that is both chronological and thematic. The scale of the period studied, the concern to combine different scales, to take into account the plurality of actors involved in these developments – national political personnel, municipal elites, teaching unions, social science specialists, etc. – naturally lead the author to make choices in the episodes selected. If it were impossible to avoid all arbitrariness, the statement does not lose its power of conviction.
The middle levels of school administration
In this vast fresco, Jean-Michel Chapoulie highlights the crucial role of supply in the development of schooling, a phenomenon already analyzed, in his previous work, for limited segments of the system, but understood here in terms of of two centuries of school policy.
At the starting point of this research, the rejection of the notion of “ social demand for education » invoked too often by the social sciences, as by the administration, to account for the significant growth in schooling over the previous two centuries. For the author, it is less a question of denying the existence of these “ “demands” for schooling “, than to recall that they are “ structured by the representations of offers which seem at least potentially to exist in a given geographical area and time » (p. 553). It is in relation to this educational offer, to its characteristics, that the diversity of relationships to schooling observable in populations – refusal, adhesion, or collective resistance – can be analyzed. This is, among other things, the approach adopted to examine the monitoring and application of laws relating to compulsory education (p. 201-221).
The author does not, however, reinscribe his work in the tradition of a “ republican historiography », centered on the legislative work of great ministers. Far from overestimating the impact of decisions taken at the central level, it highlights, for example, the gap between the Malthusian conception of schooling in post-primary sectors, in force at the Ministry of Public Education until the end of the Third Republic, and the effective development of these sectors as reflected in school statistics.
The originality of his approach lies in the attention paid to the middle levels of school administration. It is by focusing on the very functioning of the institution, at the local level, that Jean-Michel Chapoulie manages to account for the growth in school provision, and thus to explain the rise of forms of prolonged schooling, in periods where this growth is not part of the State’s priorities. The detailed study of the strategies deployed by establishment leaders to expand and retain their clientele offers the most striking illustration of a “ organization focused on the growth of school enrollment » (pp. 180-197).
Here appears all the benefit gained by the researcher from his familiarity with the sociological tradition of Chicago, and with ethnomethodology, one of its heirs: the relationship of his research with sociological work on health, police and justice is also underlined in the introduction. The fact deserves to be noted: this sociological tradition – where field work and observation constitutes a privileged path of access to the daily experience of the actors – is not the best known to historians, who are more familiar with theories by Pierre Bourdieu. The transposition of these analytical schemes thus contributes to the renewal of the themes and objects of study in the history of education.
We also regret – even if this division is justified in various respects – that the survey was not extended to higher education, quickly mentioned for the last period only. Could a study of the functioning of universities account for the modalities of growth of higher education in periods when it had, with the development of access to the baccalaureate, an increasing potential public? ? The daily functioning of higher education establishments, as well as the variations in university offerings over the last two centuries, have so far received little attention from historians: the question therefore remains unanswered.
“ From an unequal school by constitution to an unequal school in fact »
From the process of development of the educational institution, as summarized with great clarity in the conclusion, three major stages emerge. The first stage opens at the beginning of the XIXe century and ends with the educational reforms of the beginning of the Third Republic. It is marked by the progressive development of a “ system » school, which is potentially aimed at the entire population, with sectors defined according to the sex and social origin of the students. The second stage sees the dissemination and then the success of a new concept of school: it is now supposed to guarantee equality in education, and ensure the training of the national workforce. These two objectives inspired and justified the reforms of the years 1959-1975. The third stage, which continues to the present day, is characterized by the loss of credibility and legitimacy of this conception.
No doubt these elements, taken separately, were not unknown to historians. It should be noted, however, that Jean-Michel Chapoulie’s detailed study makes it possible to clarify certain points: such as the criticism of the unequal nature of the education system, which predates – contrary to what we sometimes still read – the manifesto of the Compagnons de l’Education. Université Nouvelle (p. 275-290), or even the difficult handling, by the school, of workforce training problems. But the interest of this reading lies, beyond the detail and rigor of the analyses, in the effort of synthesis which leads to an original perspective of the current educational problem.
To support this demonstration, the author returns, in the last chapter of the work, to one of the controversies which has divided the world of sociologists for more than ten years: the assessment of the democratization of the French educational system. . It therefore resumes the examination of statistical data, not without recalling the limits inherent to this approach: incomparability of categories over long periods, unequal quality of available data, difficulties linked to the choice of indices and their interpretation. Based on the study of differences in probability of access to a level of study or diploma depending on social origin between 1936 and 1995, he concludes on the impossibility of providing a unequivocal answer to the question raised. But, this reservation being made, the results of the transformations of the education system are clear. “ The two states of the school system are therefore associated with a hierarchy of chances of schooling in areas of excellence which, in its principle and in its orders of magnitude, has not been profoundly altered. » (p. 531).
Perhaps more than this conclusion – which does not really break with the assessments drawn up by other researchers – we will remember from this chapter the analysis of the ambiguities of the questioning on the democratization of the school system. Jean-Michel Chapoulie thus underlines the fact that the democratization of the least valued sectors – in the sense of a convergence of schooling rates according to social origin – is systematically absent from political discourse, like from statistical studies. Problematic asymmetry which, once brought to light, contributes – even if this is not the explicit intention of the author – to the discrediting and delegitimization of the model on which the current school system was founded.