"Some reminders of the emergence of school failure as a ""social problem"" in French educational circles"

In this paper, published in 1985, the author distances herself from the common use of the term or the notion of “academic failure”, turning it into archeology by studying its genesis, its presence or absence, and its meaning in French educational circles. Various books or reports and various journals are studied for this purpose. The author argues that, until the 1960s when lower secondary education was unified and generalized, the term academic failure concerned almost exclusively the paradoxical failures of some children from the upper or middle classes and educated backgrounds who were expected to succeed in secondary school, and not the short schooling of working classes students. In the 1960s-1970s, it was the generalization of access to lower secondary school and the difficulties encountered by its new public which made academic failure a social problem, one which is increasingly discussed, and paradoxically since the rates of young people obtaining general or professional diplomas are steadily increasing.‪