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School vocational counselling is not (always) synonymous with educational demotion
8/21/12

Géraldine André has just published a book entitled: L’orientation scolaire. Héritages sociaux et jugements professoraux (Social inheritance and teacher judgements). A work which draws on her doctoral thesis, in which she tries to understand why young people from working class backgrounds often find themselves in educational pathways which are little valued by the school authorities. Thanks to extensive and protracted fieldwork combined with a significant theoretical baggage, she highlights the importance of family and social inheritance in the process of orientation, as much for the young pupils as for the teachers involved.

COVER-Orientation-scolaireShe dreamed of flying off to Africa to study there and to prepare a thesis on the educational system. But it was finally in Charleroi that Géraldine André, a FNRS postdoctoral researcher, a Pôle Sud researcher and an attaché at the University of Liège’s Social and Cultural Anthropology Laboratory (LASC), began her doctorate. Less exotic. ‘But doubtless more of a priority for the authorities who were funding this study,’ she puts in. That was in 2005. The era of the ‘contract for schools,’ the name of the project launched by the then Minister for Education, Marie Arena. A project which aimed at, amongst other things, combating failure, school segregation and understanding why ‘too many pupils were frequenting schools and taking educational pathways and options which they had not chosen. Either because they had no projects, or because earlier difficulties had distanced them from their project.’ (1)

This much talked about contract for schools had thus (re)brought to light this statistic: in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, 65 to 70% of students taking technical or vocational courses had working class origins. ‘Above all, it was observed that there was an enormous amount of movement within these educational pathways. From establishment to establishment, from option to option, from studying at school to the workplace and conversely, etc. Many people did not complete their educational programme and ended up on the job market without a qualification,’ explains Géraldine André. Although she has received training as an anthropologist, she decided to get involved in this debate in adopting the perspective of a sociologist. Her point of departure: ‘Why do the young people from working class backgrounds, in an open educational system, often find themselves in educational pathways which are little valued by the school authorities?’

For two years Géraldine André thus took up quarters in Charleroi. Like many other cities, this former industrial basin has had to undergo a deep seated conversion when the factories little by little disappeared from the landscape, playing havoc with the whole of the local economy, leading to increases in unemployment levels and leading to the working classes finding themselves in a position of precarity.

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