The Politics Of Educational Reform In France

Professor Talbott describes the effort in France to democratize the educational system, particularly in the secondary schools, and to reform the traditional educational structure laid down by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century. Originally published in 1969. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Education, Culture and Politics in Modern France is concerned with the interrelationships among educational theory and practice, culture, and politics in France, with emphasis on the process of educational change during the first fifteen years of the Fifth Republic. This book presents a contemporary history of education in France and examines the debate about its schools and universities, as well as some of the underlying factors that account for the passion of the argument. This monograph argues that a new view of culture—defined as all the artefacts of men, whether these be material objects or their thoughts, ideas, beliefs and opinions—has enlarged the narrower, more literary concept that has swayed French education for 170 years. The discussions are organized around historical and cultural aspects; administration, finance and planning; schools, teachers, and society; and the politics of education. Government policies and school administration in France are analyzed, together with planning and budgeting for education; social factors in schooling; and the reform of higher education. Politics and education from 1958 to 1968 and since 1968 are also discussed. This text will be a useful resource for educators, politicians, sociologists, and political scientists as well as policymakers in the fields of education, culture, and politics.

Originally published in 1971. This book looks at the French educational services. which had been being reformed over the 1960s. The dynamic for change stemmed from population pressures, higher aspirations and students’ dissatisfaction. The author shows how attempts to reform have been limited by administrative, political and cultural restraints. He also explores the whole complex of inter-related professional problems which face the reformers, including the need to revise and modernize the syllabus of work in many subjects, relationships between students and their teachers, and changes in the professional education of teachers. The book will interest all those interested in the working of an educational system and its relationship to the society around it.

In common with most industrialised countries, France has undertaken an ambitious programme of education reform over the last fifteen years. This book uses key extracts from contemporary writing to examine exactly how and why that process has happened, focusing on all stages of the education system. Sections cover the main characteristics of school reform in France, its aims and objectives, a discussion of the desirability of and politics surrounding the reform process, and explorations of classroom practice, the changing role of parents, standards in schools, and the curriculum. Because of its high quality, wide and up-to-date coverage of the area, this book will be a vital reference text for all those working in this field.

Education systems and textbooks in selected countries of the Middle East are increasingly the subject of debate. This volume presents and analyzes the major trends as well as the scope and the limits of education reform initiatives undertaken in recent years. In curricula and teaching materials, representations of the “Self” and the “Other” offer insights into the contemporary dynamics of identity politics. By building on a network of scholars working in various countries in the Middle East itself, this book aims to contribute to the evolution of a field of comparative education studies in this region.

This study offers a new interpretation of the debates over education and politics in the early years of the French Revolution. Following these debates from the 1760s to the Terror (1793–94) and putting well-known works in dialogue with previously neglected sources, it situates education at the centre of revolutionary contests over citizenship, participatory politics and representative government. The book takes up education’s role in a dramatic period of uncertainty and upheaval, anxiety and ambition. It traces the convergence of philosophical, political, ideological and practical concerns in Ancien Régime debates and revolutionary attempts to reform education and remake society. In doing so, it provides new insight into the relationship between the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and sheds light on how revolutionary legislators and ordinary citizens worked to make a new sort of politics possible in eighteenth-century France.

In Third Republic France (1870-1940), the directrice of a normal school (école normale) for training women teachers was the most important woman representative of public primary education in each department. Her role was central to the republican educational project designed to bolster the establishment of a stable democracy after the Franco-Prussian War. The laicization of public education figured prominently in republican efforts to combat the old alliance of "throne and altar" favoring monarchy and religious instruction in public schools. Although laymen taught most boys in public schools by 1870, many nuns staffed separate girls' public schools. Thus an 1879 law mandated new departmental normal schools to train lay women teachers. This study of 313 normal school directrices between 1879 and 1940, an important group of professional women not previously studied, explores the challenges they encountered and their responses. Often the target of political hostility, they defended republican schooling as they interacted with local notables and authorities. In an educational system divided by social class as well as by gender, they trained teachers for "children of the people" attending free primary schools, separate from the elite and less numerous secondary schools. Directrices were expected to be role models for women teachers and to emphasize women's duties as wives and mothers, yet their careers exemplified an alternative to domesticity at a time of much debate about women's appropriate roles. Eventually some pushed against the boundaries of prevailing gender norms as they also joined professional, philanthropic, and feminist associations and sometimes publicly supported women's suffrage. Women and the Politics of Education in Third Republic France deftly examines the history of these women and the nature of their contributions to French society.