School and society (Crisis in education)

Our democratic societies are characterised by the reduction of the other to the same. The values of equality and liberty require us to see in the alter an alter ego. However, the question of education brings into tension this democratic dynamic. Due to its immaturity and dependence the child represents an alterity which resists reduction to the similar. Furthermore, education, which formerly was based on the legitimacy of an authority, the aim of which was to permit the child to accede to the community of equals by developing its autonomy, has for thirty years come into conflict with the wish to see in the difference of the child a resource and a value to be respected. Thus the article points out that the crisis in education is explained by the need to think the relationship to childhood by giving full opportunity to an idea of equality irreducible to equality of rights (transl. by J. Dudley).