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L'école et la nation

Edited by Benoit Falaize, Charles Heimberg, Olivier Loubes

Hors Collection



An old question, of national importance. "And firstly, education has nothing to do with the creation of the French nation", declares Antoine Prost. However, in France, since society and the public authorities are concerned about the nation and the disorder therein, it is to education that they direct the question of collective identity and its construction and it is to education that they turn to seek accountability and to devise solutions. This book, therefore, stands back from the issue to examine the French debate on national identity - a debate which is conventional, contradictory and lends itself to manipulation.
A new, international response. Therefore, to overcome this unique and purely French ambiguity, and because education and the nation is a scientific discipline which extends beyond borders, this volume opts to respond to national (in)sanity by means of comparison with other countries. Thanks to the exceptional mobilisation by the network of researchers at the National Institute for Pedagogical Research (now the French Institute of Education), a large number of stakeholders are taking the case of French education beyond national boundaries by comparing it to many other national situations, and, shunning generally accepted ideas, are striving to deconstruct this relationship between education and the nation.