By studying the care of the deaf-mutes and the blind at XIXe century, François Buton opens the “ black box Of the state and describes a complex system where political power, administration and education institutions operate. It thus highlights the social construction of sensory handicaps and the rapprochement of two deficient populations.
The extremely stimulating thesis developed by François Buton in his book can be summed up as follows: The administration has considered throughout the XIXe century education in deaf and blind as a favor, because it itself worked in part in the mode of favor ; It is for this reason, in particular, that the administration in charge of the deaf and the blind was able, in the 1880s, successfully resist the right to the instruction established by the political power.
The evolutionary strategies of the various institutional actors
To support his thesis, the author conducts a particularly fine sociohistoric analysis of the State, from the French Revolution to the beginning of the IIIe Republic, but he also studies very closely the role of other infra-state institutions, so-called special education establishments, and their interactions with administrative strategies: attention is mainly paid to the schools of the deaf-mutes of Paris and de Bordeaux (created respectively by the Abbés Charles-Michel de l’Épée and Sicard) and at the establishment of the Bordeaux-Bordeaux (created by Valentin Haüy).
These establishments have become state institutions placed under state protection from the French Revolution, then public establishments under the royal ordinance of 1841 which constituted them in “ General charitable establishments ». The room for maneuver left to these state institutions by the Ministry of the Interior on which they officially depend remains very important until the 1840s. The major philanthropes, members of the Boards of Directors, remain the effective leaders ; They are then, with the teachers, the best placed to represent the State and speak in its name. François Buton underlines how much this very favorable position allows them both to defend the specific interests of their establishments, by positioning themselves in central authorities in their field of activity (in particular by exercising moral guardianship on other education establishments in the deaf deafness and blind), and to weigh on the general activity of the deaf and the blind.
The author also insists on the breakdown of the 1840s and the new period which then begins, marked by bureaucratization and administrative rationalization. This results in a strengthening of central administration control over state institutions that lose all autonomy and close monitoring of inspection services: these institutions are now subject to strict strategies and regulations imposed by civil servants of the Ministry of the Interior. The author clearly shows the consequences, at different levels, of this stranglehold. This dependence on the administration first transforms the “ public charitable establishments in public charitable sector (P. 178), which leads to a new configuration in the institutional field of the education of the deaf-mutes. On the one hand, a public charitable sector very supervised by the administration ; On the other, a private sector whose state is disinterested, which allows it to develop in complete freedom-especially during the years 1850-1870, when religious congregations created many establishments. Later, in the 1880s, the State – mainly the administration of the Ministry of the Interior – will seek the support of these Catholic institutions to defend common projects.
Have a “ quasi-monopoly of legitimate state (P. 300) In terms of education of deaf-mutes allows civil servants of the Ministry of the Interior to benefit from very large autonomy as much vis-à-vis the political sphere (government and parliamentary) and to within the state apparatus (in particular vis-à-vis the Ministry of Public Instruction) to defend their own interests, in particular to maintain the mastery of the education of the deaf-mutes. The objective is to perpetuate this education as a charitable activity, different from primary education, and to maintain the use of oral methods. To achieve their ends, officials of the Ministry of the Interior go so far as to seal an alliance of circumstance with the congregationalists, animators of private establishments and opposed to the policy of secularization of public education carried out by republican governments. They succeeded in imposing by the ministerial decree of 1884 the education of deaf-mutes as a specific sector of activity distinct from ordinary education.
François Buton thus brings to light this paradoxical situation where a policy is carried out by the State despite political power: while republican school legislation was adopted in the name of secular and universal principles in the early 1880s, interior officials , allies to clergymen, allow the “ special education “To keep” its quality of favor generously granted to infirm children rather than recognizing it as a right for all (P. 312). By opening the “ black box From the State and by leading his analysis at different levels, the author therefore describes a complex system in which juxtapose and follow one another of the poles of very voluntarism, administrative more than political, and poles of indifference. By also moving his gaze from the central state to infra-state or parastatical institutions and by analyzing the strategies of these different organizations, he above all highlights configurations of actors in recomposition during the century which allow games of alliance and convergences of interest.
The social identity of the deaf-mutes and the blind
Another advantage of the work, its capacity to question the construction of social identity and the rapprochement of these two deficient populations, the deaf-mutes and the blind. The author abandons an explanatory scheme which would analyze the construction of these groups from endogenous processes (based on the production of specific identity elements), to highlight the exogenous, essentially state identification processes. He again studied with precision the different stages of these processes initiated by the State under the French Revolution in the name of the educability of these deficient populations. François Buton clearly shows how “ deaf ” And “ blind Then gradually become state categories, even if equivalence then concerns deaf or blind students less than their teachers and schools. It is in the name of their commensurability in education, and through a state policy relating to establishments, that the deaf and the blind are placed in the same category of classification by the State during the XIXe century. If this category is operative, the author, on the other hand, wonders about the absence of a clean name to qualify the category “ blind and deaf ». The reasons this time seem endogenous to these groups. François Buton thus highlights, as the main explanation factor, “ the absence of a capacity and/or a will, on the part of the spokespersons of the deaf as on the part of those of the blind, to make the defense of their respective interests a common cause (P. 215). On the other hand, in both cases, these groups constitute themselves as political minorities in opposition to the rest of society.
If they evolve, the positions vis-à-vis the statistical knowledge of the educable populations of deaf-mute and blind diverge between, on the one hand, the political and administrative sphere and, on the other, the teachers of the establishments specialized education. The first (government, parliament, state), focused on state establishments and their functioning, are disinforced by the question of potentially educable populations at the national level, which leads to a long statistical invisibility during the first half of XIXe A century (the first census of potentially educable deficient children was organized by the administration in 1851). When encrypted data is established in number in the 1880s and widely used by the services of the Ministry of the Interior, these very approximate statistics are produced under poorly scientific conditions and essentially aim to legitimize administrative strategies. It is indeed, to show that the preferential regime is sufficient to reach almost all deficient children, to prove that there is very little left to school in the departments. The author clearly shows that teachers of education institutions, on the contrary, demonstrate a real curiosity for statistics, in particular etiological statistics based on educational evaluation. Eager to understand the causes of school failure, the teachers of the Paris institution thus decide to invest in statistical knowledge, by fixing their circulars, as in 1832, objectives on “ Nature and causes of deafness ».
The circulation of knowledge
The richness of the book also is due to the lighting it brings to the circulation of knowledge in the education of deaf-mutes and the blind at XIXe century. The author thus analyzes the role of the circulars produced by the Institution of the deaf-mutes of Paris in the years 1820-1830 which conveyed throughout Europe and in America the latest improvements in terms of education methods. It shows how much this is an exceptional instrument to give the experiences carried out in Paris very great visibility with the world of deaf-mute educators. Many exchanges are also established during this period through travel and sending of works ; A fairly informal transnational network even was formed in 1832, bringing together French and foreign establishments to coordinate their educational efforts.
The other privileged moment for the circulation of ideas and reforms is the time of international congresses, in particular between 1878 and 1885. The author insisted on the fact that, in the sphere of the education of the deaf-mutes, these meetings internationals certainly constitute cognitive issues, where the “ Institutionalization of an educational model ” – that of belief in the superiority of the oral method in particular -, but are also social issues, where” takes place “ the legitimization of an institutional space »(P. 258): The transformation of the education of deaf-mutes into a specialized and differentiated activity sector. To explain it, the author analyzes the balance of power between, on the one hand, the practitioners-reorformers of education and, on the other, the traditional actors of the supervision of establishments (civil servants and congregationalists). The gradually dominant weight of the second on the first, more and more minority, within congresses, allows them to give a new form to educational activity, by transforming it into a “ special education », Different from ordinary education.
Ultimately, it is a particularly interesting work whose very rich contributions at different levels make it possible to fill a historiographical vacuum, that of the history of the education of the deaf-mutes and the blind and its institutional management by the state at XIXe century ; It brings more broadly a completely new look at the history of charity and assistance at that time. This book also constitutes a great reflection on the state in action and in particular on its capacity to build categories of populations.