The French Republican School: l’École Laïque and Its Historical Origins

Abstract

Émile Durkheim suggested that the most important institutional mission of a school is simultaneously to integrate pupils functionally with respect to the structure of the labour market and to integrate them normatively through the adherence of new generations into the dominant social values (Durkheim, 1938). This book is most concerned with the second purpose, that of the integrative role of education in the context of the formation of republican values in France. The primary education system in France has played a central role in the historical development of the relationship between education and society. The French educational system is one of the oldest and most stable public institutions in Western Europe, given the constitutional right to education, the highly centralized institutional mechanisms for the transmission of knowledge, and the institutionalization of the republican virtues. Its organizational structure has remained almost unchanged since the Loi Goblet was enacted on 30 October 1886. The historical foundations of the French educational system are based on the values of equality of opportunity, non-discrimination, neutrality, and laïcité (Hazareesingh, 2001).