The eye of Moscow

In situ, she began to frequent two institutions on a daily basis. One (almost) 100% male, the other more mixed. ‘At the beginning the teachers nicknamed me ‘the eye of Moscow,’ thinking that I was there to spy on them,’ she smiles. But, at least at first, it was above all the young pupils the researcher was interested in. She began by consulting the school files. Then, one thing leading to another, she studied more particularly the school histories of 40 of them. She followed them during the courses, during recreation, but also in different socialisation sites and in the family circle. ‘Even if school orientation is a classic question of the sociology of education and that it led me to work on sociological concepts and debates, I was determined to apply an ethnographic method, in relation to my initial training, the anthropologist working more on induction than the sociologist. I really spent a lot of time with these people in order to understand the way they lived. Going into the families was very important because that allowed me to go beyond formal declarations and presentations and to make out the meaning of their practices.’

All this fieldwork finally shaped her thesis and then her book, entitled L’orientation scolaire. Héritages sociaux et jugements professoraux (Social inheritance and teacher judgements), published by PUF (2). A book in which we can find the portraits of Jo, Jessy, Brandon, Giovanni, Kevyn, Jordan, Sylvie, Gaëtan, Laurent, Marine etc. All Charleroi teenagers whose pathways progressively distanced them from the general curriculum and led them to technical or vocational education.

An orientation, not a demotion

In analysing these pathways, Géraldine André demonstrates that, contrary to the message habitually put across by public discourse, taking courses in these two programmes is not always viewed as a failure. ‘A large number of individuals who were monitored do not perceive their school pathway as a trajectory leading to demotion,’ she explains. ‘They contribute towards their orientation, they do not submit to it. It can even happen that the decision to take technical or vocational programmes has been taken before the Board of Studies has decided to opt for it.’

If these pupils do not feel the stigmata of this educational verdict, it is thanks to the representations they have acquired through their family and social inheritance. Certain of them will for example valorise the importance of practice over that of theory, often judged to be needless. Others structure their perception of the educational field around the attachment to the local sphere and relationships of proximity, even hedonism (luck and destiny as factors in success rather than hard work), etc. The anthropologist moreover noted several teenagers re-appropriated certain characteristics which previously belonged to the world of the working classes, such as virility, the importance of physical strength, the humour of the building site, etc. Even if it wasn’t totally relevant in their current way of living. ‘On the other hand, the more the young people possess the codes linked to those of the middle classes (without necessarily mastering the cultural references), the more the school verdict will be important and the more difficulties they will have when they find themselves in a vocational type of teaching.’

(2) Géraldine André, L’orientation scolaire. Héritages sociaux et jugements professoraux, Paris, Presse Universitaires de France, coll. « Éducation & société », avril 2012.