La mise en systeme et l'economicisation de l'enseignement en France au debut des annees 1950: la fonctionnalisation d'une institution
In: Politix: revue des sciences sociales du politique, Heft 2, S. 35-56
ISSN: 0295-2319
While French schools under the Third Republic implicitly tended to reproduce their contemporary socio-economic structures, building a modern educational system during the 1944-1975s explicitly aims at bringing about new professional groups. Fostering equal opportunity, the "reforme de l'enseignement" public policy also means to meet future economical needs for managers and technicians. This will to build a school as economically efficient as socially leads to the structures of a new "educational system", the central mission of which consists in guiding pupils towards various sectors and levels of employment. Based on professional literature and administrative archives, this article questions the way state school endorsed a global economical finality between the late 1940s and the mid-1950s. This endorsement is described as the intersection of, on the one hand, the growing interest raised by training among different agricultural and industrial groups and, on the other hand, the infra-institutional competition between segments of the French ministry of education. This meeting is catalyzed by the circulation of knowledge documenting the economic and democratic views on education reform as well as their compatibility. This way, the article analyses a public policy as a mechanism of a specific social process: the economicization of education. Adapted from the source document.