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Any reflection on learning to live together in school cannot avoid a reasoned critical review of the matter of discipline which, in its various forms, is exercised by adults in positions of authority.
According to Denis Jeffrey, classroom authority is problematic. The evidence confirms that a teacher no longer embodies “natural” authority – that is, believed by the students to come from him personally. This type of authority, which was imposed principally by means of fear and constraint, certainly cannot be revived. Along with Francois Dubet, Jeffrey even questions whether this seemingly natural authority was only a mirage, as it rested on a legitimacy maintained by the institution.
Alain Renaut, a philosophy teacher at the University of Paris IV, then poses the question: how does one establish a comprehensive system of authority and educational sanctions? A delicate question, if ever there was one, in that “the dynamic of democracy, which we all endorse and whose values we consider to be sacred, includes the child, whom we have also undertaken to view as a fellow human being.”(1)
Bastien, Jospin and Vanhouwe (2) underline that at the present time schools, confronted with countless issues, find only one and the same solution – punishment - in the face of an educational challenge which is in fact unique. Their desire is to abolish punishment in favour of sanction-reparation. Educational sanction is therefore accompanied by a “healing procedure” involving to repair, to repair oneself and to prepare oneself. The authors explain:
- “to repair is to return to the other what one has deliberately taken, stolen or destroyed”. From this stems the necessary distinction, brought up by Bernard Defrance, between fault and error: if the first is intentional, the second is not. Concretely, the child is thus placed in a situation where he must “repair” his error towards the others”
- “to repair is above all to repair oneself. It is therefore a question of oneself and of one’s self-esteem which is at stake in this context.”
- “to prepare oneself involves the long term. The ultimate aim of education, according to Olivier Reboul, is not to repair but to prepare: this central question should be seen as an objective completely apart from sanction in education but also and above all from sanction-reparation.”
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(1)
In : Jacquard, Albert, Manent, Pierre et Alain Renaut (2003). «Une éducation sans autorité ni sanction ?» Paris : Grasset.
(2)
michel.bastien@skynet.be ; gauthier.vanhouwe@laposte.net
