The social sciences of education and “the Ministry” in France

During a conference in 1983 devoted to a review of the sociology of education, the author focused on the relationship between the social sciences of education and the Ministry in charge of Education. She recalls that the INED’s initial work connecting educational paths and performance to a series of students’ social characteristics was based on a survey carried out under the Vichy government in 1944, but prefigured by the work of a commission created at the initiative of Henri Sellier, Minister of Health of the Front populaire, and chaired by the psychologist Henri Wallon. While this type of work has been taken over by the Ministry’s statistical services since the 1970s, research aimed at addressing and studying educational phenomena more generally, in relation to other social phenomena, has most often been encouraged and funded, not by this Ministry, but by “external” bodies or organizations such as the DGRST or the CNRS. Questioning the balances, practices and ideologies specific to the different states and segments of the education system, as well as the relationships between school structure and social structure, this research is often viewed with reluctance both by those responsible for the different hierarchical levels of the Ministry and by teachers and their union or association leaders.‪