Pedagogical Authority and Domination a Reassessment of the Reproduction Theory

Jean Louis Fabiani, Central European University

Pedagogical authority and domination A reassessment of the reproduction theory Today, a growing number of people in France advocate a “return to authority” in the educational system. Many fictions are spread about a so-called golden age of French schooling during the Third Republic, based on a nostalgia for a republican consensus that never existed. By analyzing different modes of pedagogical relations from 1880 to the present, I will attempt to shed some original light on the different forms of justification about methods, types of classroom interaction and learning contents. I will pay special attention to meritocratic and egalitarian claims, and to changes in training teachers, as the to be educated population increased dramatically. French Education has been characterized by very frequent reforms and laws, developed to remediate what was thought as a critical state, as opposed to a fancied “organic” one, following the distinction brought in by Saint-Simon and Comte. The fact that the two best known French sociologists, Durkheim and Bourdieu, devoted time to theorizing on education is far from being anecdotal. Drawing on their seminal work, I will try to contribute to a critical sociological history of the schooling process, simultaneously attached to account for the specificities of the French case (its Sonderweg, so to speak) and the lessons that we can draw from the positionality of sociologists engaged in a both explanatory and committed investigation of the schooling process. Jean-Louis Fabiani Central European University (Vienna, AT)

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 100. Educational Reforms and Transformations: Revisiting Several National Experiences