Opening : Is secularity taking the wrong way ?, Joël Roman (Revue Esprit)
Lexical rudiments ( summary), Daniel Hameline (University of Geneva)
In the course of academic year of 1991-1992, D. Hameline,
now professor emeritus at the university of Geneva, shared with
others within the same university, the responsability of the first
year of the Certificate of in-service training for teachers
specialized in adult education. To their intention, all confirmed
training practitioners, he produced a glossary. After having
characterized in the last issue, one might add with a glint of
humour, the very distinctive features of the 'discourse of
formation' , he now broaches the analysis of the concept of
'method' , and in particular that of 'pedagogical'
method.
Notion : The reward ( summary), Alain Vergnioux (University of Caen)
The reward takes its place within the logic of gift and
counter-gift and, at the same time, it detaches itself from
it. The following analysis will show that its true meaning lies in
some sort of desinterest aiming at the subject himself as value
either in matters concerning school or in the public space of
democracy. The analysis of the fairy-tale made by Greimas are
there to reinforce this hypothesis as those of Seneca long ago
showing that the benefit is equivalent to a sign and finds its
reason in the exercise of good will.
Report: Justice and laicity
Introduction : Laicity and social justice, Brigitte Frelat-Kahn (IUFM of Paris) and Hubert Vincent (IUFM of Versailles)
Laicity between philosophy and history ( summary), Pierre Kahn (IUFM of Versailles)
First one should refrain from restricting the scope of the
idea of laicity to the conditions of its emergence and secondly
one should reject a platonistic approach to laicity which treats
it as an essence that balances the essence of republic and that of
the school system, the Ferry laws being priviledged enough to
incarnate this intelligible triad. Laicity must be dealt with as
it is, that is as a historically determinated idea of one's
rights. From this idea may nevertheless arise various conditions
which found its legitimacy. Yet, the philosophical commitments
(which) related to the autonomy of reason, to the autonomy of body
politic and to human rights in their very universality pave the
way to a democratic space for several possible
institutions. French laicity was one of those and a posteriori it
is the reason which justifies the fight for laicity yet again
laicity is a means the goal of which is democracy.
Citizenship and education : 'the right to have rights' in the political
philosophy of Hannah Arendt ( summary), Marie-Claire Caloz-Tschopp (University of Geneva)
Hannah Arendt considers education in terms of a breach
between tradition and modernity. It is capital for her that
education should be conservative. 'It preserves what is new and
revolutionary in every child' . Education installs them in the gap
between the past and the future, a weird period in-between which
sometimes finds its way in the historic time, a source of hope and
a possibility for one to exercise one's thoughts and actions. It
is indeed because education is to be considered in the power of
man's freedom and in the feasability of a new beginning that one
should reflect over 'the right to have rights' . 'The right to
have rights' is one's assurance to have one's place in an
organised community and therefore in the world, to act and to
express freely one's own opinion. The role of education has to be
conceived in the ceaseless construction of the public
space.
The issue of education at the dawn of democratic times :
the analysis of Tocqueville ( summary), Philippe Foray (University of Saint-Etienne)
Nowhere in his work does Tocqueville broach the issue of
education. He has never considered it as a specific issue. Yet,
in his theory of democracy, it has a recognized place on two
points. Democratic societies display two essential characteristics
: equality of conditions and individualism. On the first point,
the author shows that education is meant to distribute positions
in society according to the skills and merits it helps to
acquire. Concerning the second point, education, if it remains
under the control of State, protects the human being from any
forme of tyranny and constructs the basis for social bonds. The
analysis made by P. Foray show that the Tocquevilian vision makes
it possible to satisfy the twofold yet paradoxical requirement of
our modern societies towards school : the promotion of
individualism along with the inclusion in society.
Interest, justice and laicity ( summary), Denis Meuret (University of Bourgogne)
For one to grasp fully the idea of laicity implies that
one renounces the idea of laicity being born of a rejection of
religion to therefore think a « political » model in which the
school system may find its legitimacy in the founding of a social
cooperation between men and women free and equal in
rights. Excellency in the traditional French system has acquired
the same status as saintliness in catholicism and the question for
justice in the education system has exclusively been linked to
that of social inequalities of access to higher education. In the
« political » model - as John Rawls views it - justice has it that
the school system gives everybody a chance to live a life that, on
the basis of sound and rational judgement, they may find to be
good. Merit then ceases to be the main principle of justice and
the access to higher education ceases to be the sole purpose of
justice. Yet it is important that the (type of) education received
by all, equality of the amount and that of acquired capacities,
their quality and the means to use them, should become criteria of
social justice.
Equity in an open system ( summary), Gérard Wormser (ENS of Fontenay/Saint-Cloud)
The French education system once thought that it could
preserve its homogeneousness in a society that was but hardly open
to the outside world and hardly prone to competition. This system
undergoes a crisis when going to university no longer goes
together with the hope of improving one's living standards, and
when school merit generates extreme differentiations between
people's destinies without those who have benefited from it
feeling indebted to those who have not. As such evolution
undermines the social contract, all that contributes to make the
system more transparent and easier to use favours equity. Thus, in
an open system the importance of representations coming from the
outside world can only but grow. The school system just cannot do
without the complexity which structures the present-days
communities. The « sharing of knowledge » is a phrase (of) which
one has to understand the importance of. Complexity begins with a
shift towards responsibility.
Studies : Philosophical models of teaching ( summary), Israël Scheffler (University of Harvard)
The question of teaching can be reduced to three main
points : what sort of learning shall I aim to achieve ? In what
does such learning consist ? How shall I strive to achieve it ?
These points may be examined on three levels : normative,
epistemological and empirical. I. Scheffler chooses to deal with
them indirectly by discussing three examples of educational models
: those of impression, insight and rules. Organizing detailed
confrontations between locke, Augustine and Kant, he shows the
assets and relevance, the drawbacks and limits of their different
conceptions.
Correspondence : Reason and decision ( summary), Francisco Naishtat (University of Buenos Aires)
The finiteness of reason submits human behaviour to the
double imperative of choice and of decision. The author shows that
ratio is based on a mathematical model and aims at universality of
thought, leaving behind it among all the variousnesses of reality
the free uncertainty of the mind, mens, whose operations are
conditioned by the body. Action thus requires a decision to move
forward along and between several paths, without the geometrical
clarity of a classical French garden but among the obscure
vacillations of lived experience.
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