Secularism: the school is finished?

As the sociologist Choukri ben Ayed underlines in a recent work, the French school has long thought of a space defined by universalism, and therefore “ immune Against the effects of ethnicization at work in the rest of the social body. However, since the 1980s, a series of events and mutations (ghettoization of districts of large complexes, tensions around religious signs in schools, repeated urban riots) affected the educational institution itself. This was the case almost 20 years ago when the 2005 popular districts are embraced, which revealed in part of the disadvantaged young people a strong feeling (ment) discriminatory towards the educational institution. How does the latter therefore react to the growing ethnoreligious plurality of French society in mainland France ?

It is to this question both socially sensitive and thorny methodologically that the collective work coordinated by Julien Garric and Françoise Lorcerie. This one is taken from a session of Ried (International Education and Diversity Network) held on May 20-21 2021 in Marseille. This network, founded in 2013 by academics of Belgium, Canada, France and Switzerland, aims precisely to understand the interactions between increasingly plural companies and their school systems. The book chooses a very specific angle, that of the perception of the subject by field staff (body of teaching, orientation, school life), beyond the growing national injunctions on secularism and values of republics at school. Three angles can be mentioned: the attitude of educational personnel, the international comparison, and the determining issue of the recompositions of the school relationships to the religious.

Ethno-racial questions at the school seen from the field

The first axis is justified in a nourished introduction (p. 7-30) by Françoise Lorcerie. Literature of Shs In France increasingly incorporates ethnoracial questions into school. However, the attitude of field staff is still little studied. However, those that the sociologist Michael Lipsky calls “ Street-Level Bureaucrats (Literally, the agents of the public field service) are precisely the most in contact with students and parents. Julien Garric underlines this in a contribution centered on three very degraded colleges of the Aix-Marseille Academy (p. 31-53). He studies the interactions between a tense school climate, great poverty and ethnicization of school relationships (to hear here as the explanation by the supposed ethnicity of student practices and attitudes, even staff, at school). The staff, often young, having had little choice of their assignment, unarmeded by the level of tensions in the settlement districts of the colleges, literally take refuge in increasingly inaccessible establishments.

The author very finely analyzes a form of “ bunkerization », Symbolized by the rooms of teachers who are overinvested as the place of security between teachers. Families, language and religious attitudes of students are devalued, the border between judgments of a social (great poverty), security (undeniably strong delinquency in the neighborhood) and cultural being porous. However, as Fabrice Dhume’s contribution underlines (p. 55-78), ethnicization also affects educational staff from minorities and immigration. As well in their relations with their hierarchy (inspection, school heads) as with their peers, they are faced with judgments and identity assignments. This leads to an injunction to reject the “ communitarianism ». However, this request, paradoxically, associates personnel who proclaim themselves strongly attached to republican neutrality with their communities of origin. Such a tension is found in the chapter of Fanny Gallot and Francine Nyambek-Mebenga (p. 107-130). Their contribution is devoted to the manner of teaching and tackling in class the secularism by the teachers’ s trainees of the 1^er degree. The secular principle is indeed both essential of school programs and prescriptions, and a source of fears about the reactions – effective or expected – of students. It also reveals, in a subtle way, differentiations between professors in schools of European origin and those from extra-European minorities in the way of approaching the secular principle. Here too, fractures linked to the ethnicization of the school field appear to the educational practices in the classes.

In the prism of international comparisons

The second axis is that of international comparison. José-Luis Wolfs (p. 79-105) is based on the testimonies in the formation of teachers of the second general degree in French-speaking Belgium. In a Belgian context where the stake and the institutional framework are defined by the “ neutrality “, Teacher staff are nevertheless faced with the expression of the community and religious fact. However, unlike the chapters devoted to France, it seems less perceived as a threat, or at least as a questioning of the educational institution. Sivane Hirsch, Geneviève Audet and Sabrina Moisan (p. 131-153) are studying the teaching of so-called sensitive subjects in class in Quebec. The expression of ethnorellious identities can disturb them, sometimes in forms quite close to France. Nevertheless, the Quebec education system and its staff favored both the consideration of discrimination issues (gendered, racial, religious) and the application of programs. However, it should not be idealized abroad. This is evidenced by the particularly lively debates which cross the United States on the application at the school of concept of “ Critical Race Theory “(CRT). This aims to analyze public institutions and policies in the priority of racism (or “ systemic racism »). Émilie Souyri (p. 155-176) shows that the CRT Used within the framework of the school leads for example to question the over-representation of white teachers (79% of teachers, against 51% in the population, p. 164), and to make it a problem in itself. This does not help promote already strong ideological tensions and polarization on school issues across the Atlantic.

Working -class neighborhoods, Islam, school tensions ?

The third axis is that of a perception triangle which has been considerably strengthened since “ The Affair of the scarves »From 1989 – which took place in one of the most disadvantaged colleges in the Amiens Academy. Its three poles are working -class districts, academic difficulties and Islam. This triangle appears pearl in the different contributions (so p. 43, p. 69, p. 121). It is explained as well in the contribution of Françoise Lorcerie (p. 177-208) as in the conclusion of Julien Garric (p. 209-214). Muslim students of large degraded sets are crystallizing more and more, according to the two authors, the fear of a disturbance of the school order by the emergence of religious phenomena. Françoise Lorcerie stresses that this fear promotes a more authoritarian educational style. This advocates an increased distance between personnel and students (and their families), reinforced sanctions on the behaviors seen as ‘as an ascolars’ and an increasing security of educational establishments. Far from being peaceful, the educational care of an increasingly plural society reveals the tensions that work the French school as close as possible to the field.

Conclusion

The book therefore underlines, through its various contributions, how the ethnoracial identification processes travel the education system. This generates a powerful paradox. On the one hand, the French school is, as this has already been recalled, deeply marked by a universalist discourse, favoring ordinary to communities. On the other hand, the routine practices that take place there are permeable – sometimes unconsciously – with ethno -racial assignments, both in students and among staff. This contradiction does not contribute little to feed both the sensitivity (social, media, political, administrative) of the subject and the friction in educational establishments.