The (Un)acceptable Civic Policy Feedbacks: Conciliating Normalisation and Neutrality in the Making of French Education Policies

Questioning ‘who is a (good) citizen’ and ‘what is citizenship’ raises acutely school’s framing of citizenship and its contribution to civic socialization. In the complex landscape of State actions in education, teaching policies undeniably deserve a particular attention, as they are the ones pupils are mainly exposed to. Such is the case of civic education, which is currently named ‘Moral and Civic Teaching’ in France. For the last two decades, civic education has gained impetus in national teaching policies throughout Europe (Eurydice, 2005, 2017), and France gives it an official importance that might be brought out (Bozec, 2016). As it is explicitly designed in order to convey civic norms, it epitomises State school ambitions regarding citizenship normalisation (Galston, 2001). That is why, from the case of education, it gives a telling example to think about how public policies can be devoted to shaping ‘good’ citizens. Even though civic education has appeared as the direct expression of State intentions for citizenship formation (De Swaan, 1988 ; Schudson, 1998), especially in France (Déloye, 1994), it remains mainly studied from an approach aimed at unveiling its real effects on pupils (Denver & Gordon, 1990 ; Niemi & Junn 1998 ; Geboers, 2013 ; Whiteley, 2014). Otherwise, especially in France, its conception and its framing of citizenship are essentially studied from a historic perspective (Vitiello, 2007 ; Bozec, 2010). Following the framework of this panel, we rather would like to show that it is heuristic to contemplate this teaching from the lens of public policy in the contemporary era. More precisely, our empirical and theoretical ambition is to stress that it is heuristic to engage an issue generally deemed political socialization consideration through the lens of public policy formalisation and implementation ; that citizenship socialization might be fruitfully integrated within a public policy inquiry, as it is explicitly put at the very heart of such a State program of action. To do so, the paper relies on a multi-scalar inquiry, from the Ministry of National Education to classrooms. It echoes the global scope of the panel, as it analyses « the civic teaching » inherent to public policies (Landy, 1993) from the perspective of policy making and policy implementation. Going further of a top-down perspective (Sabatier, 1986), it allows to study the tensions created by the fact of putting citizenship formation at the heart of policies when they are realised by civil servants supposed to be neutral. This ambiguity regarding street-level bureaucrats’ function is dedoubled by the contemporary tension between civic voluntarism from public authorities and the growing cultural and axiological pluralism that calls into question State civic normalization, not only in its realisation – by teachers – but also in its legitimacy – in its ministerial framing. On the whole, the example of an emblematic education policy allows to go back to the basics by putting citizenship into perspective regarding how the State in action promotes a legitimate definition of the « good » citizen to the future ones.