Repères, n°58/2018

In 2015, the French teaching programs for cycles 3 and 4 provide literary and personal training for the teaching of literature. At the same time, the programs of moral and civic education (in France) or ethics and religious culture (in Quebec) give literary works the opportunity to develop students' critical thinking, their civil responsibility and their reflexivity, in terms of personal and social skills. This issue of Repères questioned this evolution of institutional prescription relative to ethics for literary teaching and contribute to identify her implications in different French-speaking countries. Does the "ethical turn" in literary studies require a renewed interpretation in the field of teaching? What does it mean to teach literature in an ethical intention today? How to avoid the moralizing use of literature at school? How to articulate the analyzable values in the literary works, the values of each reader, the interaction about axiology in the classroom and the prescriptions of the school institution about moral education? What is said and silenced, observed and concealed when it comes to ethics in the class of literature? The authors address these essential questions according to the epistemological, theoretical, and praxeological perspectives crossed.