Conférence : L'Ecole - Les apports de la sociologie, par Hervé Bernard, enseignant en sciences économiques et sociales

Inequalities and success at school, social diversity, integration of young people, citizenship and secularism, defining curricula, the role of parents, changes in the teaching profession... here are just a few of the school-related issues that are the talk of the media, often at the heart of political debate, and sometimes the talk of family dinners!
Why this centrality? Because school is at the heart of the republican project... and because everyone has a sensitive experience of it that allows them to have a point of view on the issue. To use a footballing metaphor, France is often said to have 60 million coaches of the French national football team, which is why debates about the team's performance are so passionate. It also has 60 million ministers of education!
Unfortunately, as in so many cases, these essential debates are not always peaceful and, above all, the discourse can often give way to commonplaces.
Yet an entire field of sociology specialises in the study of the social phenomenon of schooling: the sociology of the school. Since Emile Durkheim in the nineteenth century, and even more so since the 1960s, sociology has been interested in schools as institutions, that is to say as spaces of social positions within which social functions are performed and actors express themselves.
Without going back over the history of the sociology of the school, this talk will quickly return to the founding works (particularly in France) of Passeron, Bourdieu, Boudon, Beaudelot, Establet, etc. in order to clarify the purpose of the sociology of the school.
Above all, it will present contemporary work that sheds light on some of the questions that are at the heart of today's debates on schools:
- Why is the link between social position and academic performance still so strong in France?
- How can we combat the decline in pupil attainment? And first of all, is it really falling?
- Are ability groups an appropriate educational response to the heterogeneity of pupils?
- Do common school uniforms help to reduce social inequalities within schools?
Four subjects (and a few others) that are regularly at the forefront of political and media concerns, all the more so given the high turnover of national education ministers...
By reviewing recent work in the sociology of schools, this conference will attempt to shed some light on these debates.

Suggested bibliography:
Hervé BERNARD, Adèle MONTI, Osons l'école : Plaidoyer pour une école audacieuse, EUD, 2019, Dijon
Raymond BOUDON, L'inégalités des chances, 1973, Colin, Paris
Pierre BOURDIEU, Jean Clause PASSERON, Les héritiers, 1964, Editions de Minuit, Paris
Pierre BOURDIEU, Jean Claude PASSERON, La Reproduction, 1970, Editions de Minuit, Paris
Christian BAUDELOT, Roger ESTABLET, L'école capitaliste en France, 1971, Maspero, Paris
François DUBET, La place et les chances, repenser la justice sociale, 2010, Seuil, Paris
François DUBET, Marie DURU-BELLAT, 10 Propositions pour changer l'école, 2015, Seuil, Paris
François DUBET, Marie DURU-BELLAT, L'école peut-elle sauver la démocratie, 2020, Seuil, Paris
Marie DURU-BELLAT, L'inflation scolaire, les désillusions de la méritocratie, 2006, Seuil, Paris

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