Educating children by respecting their spontaneous interests: Such is the promise of alternative pedagogies. Subjecting these promises to sociological critique, Ghislain Leroy shows that they are not necessarily emancipatory and may even contribute to the reproduction of social inequalities.
What motivated French colonisers to found schools in the Maghreb and Subsaharan Africa? Carole Reynaud-Paligot shows how their superiority complex ended up overcoming their meritocratic ideals and dreams of diversity.
How do children perceive the world around them, from the circles closest to them – their friends and family – to the most distant spheres – work and politics? In a recent book, two French sociologists open up a critical dialogue with psychology to describe the socially differentiated processes through which children learn to think and think about themselves.
How are citizenship values translated into schooling processes in India? Rich ethnographies reveal how diversely students perceive, reproduce and subvert schooling intentions in a highly stratified society under the influence of peer cultures, media and marketing.
French programs of “positive discrimination” are supposed to help open elite education to socially disadvantaged students. While challenging the idea that diversity is truly promoted in the United States, a comparative study of current trends in Paris and Chicago show the opacity of the selection criteria in Paris, and the existence of a clear geographical segregation.
Youth gangs are often discussed but rarely investigated. In an ethnographic study that examines families, schools, and the street, sociologist Marwan Mohammed reconstructs the principles according to which these groups are formed in the Paris region.
