As discussed above, primarisation or schoolification has characterised the relationship between early childhood and primary education in France for some time, particularly since 1989. When the schoolification policy was at its height in 2008, the école maternelle curriculum projected an image of the child who was ‘becoming a student’, who was to internalise the rules of the school and adjust to the school environment as essential conditions for successful schooling. However, through the adoption of the new education law in 2013, the image promoted by the government changed to accommodate a more holistic view of the child. Many interviewees described the relationship as schoolification, and expressed cautious optimism about the shift of government discourse regarding the école maternelle and élémentaire.
Broadly, the empirical analysis pointed to two factors related to the image of the child that supported a schoolified relationship in France. These factors were: (1) developmental psychology as a dominant lens through which children in the maternelle and élémentaire are viewed; and (2) the culture and tradition that support a hierarchical adult-child relationship and authoritative child-rearing style.
Developmental psychology
The most frequent response to the question of the images of the child was that the images in the maternelle and élémentaire are different because the age and developmental level of children are different. What underlies this perception is developmental psychology that explains the child’s growth in different universal stages of development. As discussed in Chapter 3 on the conceptual framework, developmental psychology typically projects an image of the young child as ‘becomings’, who are vulnerable and incomplete, vis-à-vis older
children who are closer to ‘beings’, like adults, who are defined as less vulnerable and more complete, according to the perspective of authors within the sociology of childhood (James and Prout, 1997; Qvortrup, Corsaro and Honig, 2011). This hierarchical view of the child and her/his competences according to age fits well with the type of relationship between the école maternelle and élémentaire, whereby the former is defined subordinate to the latter, and the former’s task is to prepare children for the latter and facilitate their integration in the latter. Therefore, seeing from the perspective of the image of the child, there is, in a sense, a conceptual ground that supports a readying and hierarchical relationship between the école maternelle and élémentaire.
Another frequent response along this line was that, traditionally, the école maternelle sees the child as nature, and the école élémentaire the child as reproducer of knowledge and culture – which corresponds to the images described in the 1994 paper by Dalhberg and Lenz Taguchi concerning the Swedish preschool and school. Unlike the école élémentaire, which upholds a passive image of the child, listening to adults, learning through transmissive pedagogy, the école maternelle views the child holistically, learning by play and with the whole body, developing potential, curiosity, creativity, and desire to learn. Some interviewees gave similar observations by referring to the école maternelle as seeing the ‘child’, with the élémentaire seeing the ‘student’.
Culture and tradition regarding child-rearing and adult-child relationship
There was the opinion that, even though there may be some disagreements on the surface regarding how the child is viewed in the maternelle and élémentaire, essentially, the two sectors hold the same image, i.e. they address the child as student, and not as the child. Children in the maternelle are learning by listening, which continues in the élémentaire. The school is not there for the child’s flourishing and harmonious development and competence development in all domains, but its role is essentially to engage children in basic skills learning, meaning reading, writing and arithmetic. There, in the idea of learning, the child is passive and receives information provided by adults; if the child studies well and does the exercise well, he or she will succeed.
Some interviewees observed that the image of the child as passive and listening child – which fits well with the relationship of schoolificaiton – finds expression in the French societal expectation vis-à-vis children. For example, in the family, it is not ‘laisser-faire’ but framing, with the expectation that children have to accept certain frustrations and constraints in life in living and interacting with others. It is not quite the image of the child as featured in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the country. So, even if the maternelle has the image of the child as ‘nature’, the emphasis on learning rules and integration into a group
were cited as the fundamental pedagogical features of the école maternelle, which are conditioned by the physical features of the settings.
The data on the école maternelle and élémentaire settings and the flow of the day presented in Chapter 6 reflect a certain image of the child that is conducive to a schoolified practice. The settings frame or limit the extent to which teachers can provide care and learning experiences according to their ideal image of the child and what is ‘good’ for children. The French école maternelle and élémentaire settings are reflective of the strong school identity of these establishments: having a main classroom for 25 children per classroom51 in both the maternelle and élémentaire. There is one teacher and one assistant in the maternelle classroom while there is one teacher in the élémentaire classroom.52 Although the furniture and activity corner arrangements are different between the maternelle and élémentaire classrooms, the space is limited in both classrooms. The timetables of both settings are quite regimented, again, a reflection of a strong school identity in the organisation of activities. The available space, staff and timetable organisation in the French settings are not conducive to a child-centred approach enabling individual and diversified responses to individuals’ interest and needs in their learning. They rather call for well-behaved child who listens to the teacher, who needs to manage a large number of children at once. It can be said that the institutional settings reflect the culture and tradition regarding child-rearing and adult-child relationship.
One remarkable difference between the French and Swedish interviews is that the latter spoke of teachers learning from and with children, which was unheard of in the former. This can be interpreted as arising from the cultural differences: the cultural expectation held by the French people is that the adult-child relationship is hierarchical, with the adult having the authority over the child; while the Swedish people see the adult and the child in a more equal relationship, and support democratic participation of both children and adults in the shaping of actions and environments.
51 Usually, there are on average 27 children per class in the école maternelle and the école élémentaire.
The settings from which the data is presented are designated as ‘ZEP (zone d’éducation prioritaire) school’, i.e. schools with the status of being in the education priority zone. The ZEP schools are obliged not to surpass 25 children per classroom, and receive extra funding aimed to assist disadvantaged children’s learning, development and wellbeing. Most recently, the ZEP policy has been renamed as REP (reseau d’éducation prioritaire). http://www.metronews.fr/info/education-prioritaire-adieu-zep- bienvenue-rep-qu-est-ce-qui-va-changer/mnlp!s1cw8Mr7h0kes/
52 As presented in Chapter 1, there are two types of staff in the école maternelle: professeur des écoles
(teacher), and ATSEM (assistant). Professeurs des écoles are state employees, whereas ATSEM are municipal employees. The staffing of ATSEM depends on the financial means of the concerned municipal government. ATSEMs are working side by side with professeurs des écoles in the maternelle classroom, especially for younger age groups, ATESMs are increasingly absent or available only during a part of the school week due to the weakened financial base of municipal governments in recent years.
Apart from the ones described above, the empirical study found other images of the child held for both the maternelle and élémentaire. For example, one interviewee talked of the importance of seeing the students first and foremost as a child, as a person, who cannot be reduced to a sum of behaviours, results and grades she or he shows in school. Other images include: the child as researcher, always curious of the surrounding and interested in exploring further; the child as an active person interacting and constructing with others, which call for different kinds of pedagogy from the transmission model. The people who held these views were concerned about the schoolification tendencies in France, and supported a different kind of relationship.