Debate Factory in French Citizenship Education: Political Symbolism or School Reality?

In the latest IEA report on ICCS, discussion on current issues is the activity most commonly used in citizenship education throughout nearly all of the participating countries (Schulz et al. 2017: 172). Is this pedagogy also central to France, a country that did not participate in the study? What exactly does it refer to? This paper examines the room made for debate within the French civic education curricula and in classroom practices. We carried out a global and detailed study of the official curricula, of the Ministry of Education online tools, and of the press on the latest reforms. In addition, from 2016 to 2019 we observed more than 70 hours of civic education courses in 7 classes (age 10, 14 and 15) located near Paris. Finally, we had thorough semi-structured interviews with the civic education teachers totalling 30 hours and with about fifty students totalling 46 hours. In regards to this topic, in 2015, France rushed to introduce a new “Moral and Civic Education” in response to the Charlie Hebdo attack. In this particular political context and faced with the many ‘political classrooms’ brought about by the event, the French Government placed debate and critical discussion at the heart of the new curricula. The Government provided teachers with comprehensive methodological and pedagogical resources on critical thinking. However the significant pedagogical freedom given to teachers concerning a “secondary” subject combined with teachers’ lack of confidence in the pedagogy of debate seem to curb the organization of ‘political classrooms’ to the advantage of informative, less controversial and less in-depth discussions. Nevertheless, sometimes debates on certain challenges to democracy invite themselves into the classroom, initiated by students.