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Present in the processions of the demonstration or blocking their establishment for the day, high school students and students wanted to show their opposition to the pension reform project on January 19.\u00a0In the evening, 13,000 people followed the political\u00a0program Backseat<\/em>\u00a0by Jean Massiet on Twitch, of which 40% of the community is\u00a0between 15 and 24 years old<\/a>\u00a0, and in which\u00a0he received Philippe Martinez<\/a>\u00a0, secretary general of the CGT.<\/p>\n These indicators remind us that young people are much less interested in politics than we would like to claim.\u00a0Their interest even appears from childhood, during the first confrontations with the news, in the family, in the media or on social networks.\u00a0However, at school, it would seem that they are not given the tools to decipher the political world.\u00a0We would even avoid talking about it.<\/p>\n This observation is all in all surprising since, since the 19th\u00a0century and\u00a0the\u00a0school of Jules Ferry<\/a>\u00a0, the programs provide for civic education to be delivered in class to train students to become informed and committed citizens.\u00a0So what is it really?<\/p>\n The results presented here come from a\u00a0thesis<\/a>\u00a0on learning citizenship at school.\u00a0The survey, combining observations and in-depth interviews, was conducted between 2016 and 2021 in seven schools in the Ile-de-France region, three of which were in a priority education network.<\/p>\n If civic education has survived the decades, it is because it is conceived as a pillar of Western democracies.\u00a0It is established to strengthen a nascent democracy;\u00a0we reform it to\u00a0revive a system in crisis<\/a>\u00a0.\u00a0Faced with growing political and social tensions, it has even been the subject of European and international valorization for the past twenty years.\u00a0Civic competence is\u00a0defined by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union<\/a>\u00a0as one of the eight key competences to be developed in young people, in particular to promote \u201cactive citizenship\u201d and \u201csocial integration\u201d.<\/p>\n At the same time, this postulate that the acquisition of minimal political competence by young people is essential to the advent of enlightened and participating citizens is beginning to gain consensus among\u00a0Anglo-Saxon<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0French<\/a>\u00a0researchers after several decades of debate.<\/p>\n It is in this context and following the\u00a0Charlie Hebdo<\/em>\u00a0and Hyper Cacher attacks that France decided in 2015 to introduce a new compulsory discipline throughout the school curriculum:\u00a0moral education. and Civics<\/a>\u00a0(EMC).<\/p>\n Although the reform of the EMC is elevated to the rank of political priority of the executive, the discipline is in fact granted limited resources and retains a very secondary status.\u00a0The EMC is grafted onto another or even two other subjects in the case of history-geography at the end of elementary and middle school, which risks making it an adjustment variable.\u00a0In addition, no evaluation of teachers is officially defined since the specialty \u201cMoral and civic education\u201d does not exist in the inspection bodies.<\/p>\n In the same way, the instructions for evaluating students are minor and there is no separate test in the national examinations.\u00a0And the great pedagogical freedom offered to teachers for this teaching actually hides a lack of support resources.<\/p>\n Among teachers, the EMC then conveys the image of a discipline that “everyone gives a damn” without exception: the Ministry of National Education, heads of establishments, unions and parents.\u00a0Added to this negative perception are multiple professional constraints that keep them from embarking on this teaching.<\/p>\n Due to a lack of training and resources, teachers do not feel competent on civic subjects.\u00a0They consider that they have to invest a lot of personal time, which they lack, to be able to approach them in class.\u00a0In addition, the participatory pedagogies recommended for EMC require specific material equipment (computer tools, Internet connection, large rooms, etc.) which they do not have or which are outdated.\u00a0Doing CME also means restricting the possibilities of finishing the heavy program of the main discipline with which it is associated.<\/p>\n Consequently,\u00a0as since the middle of the XX\u1d49 century<\/a>\u00a0, citizenship education remains in the state of speeches and programs without becoming a real practice in the daily life of the classes.\u00a0The relegation to the background of the discipline is perpetuated.\u00a0The EMC is little taught, its hours are sacrificed for the benefit of the main discipline (history, geography, etc.) or other teaching priorities (remedial courses, outings, evaluations, etc.).<\/p>\n However, children and adolescents express a strong interest in this school discipline which is different from the others, both in its form and in its substance, and this is nothing new.\u00a0Already in the 1970s,\u00a0Madeleine Grawitz<\/a>\u00a0showed that more than 80% of pupils had a positive opinion of civic education.<\/p>\n Students first link their appetite for EMC to its informal nature, ie with more flexible school rules and an important place given to their participation and their opinion.\u00a0Discipline is like breathing in a routine and formal school setting.\u00a0This does not mean that they find civic education simple.\u00a0A second-year student sums it up in a few words: What makes young people curious about citizenship education is also the subjects that are studied there: \u201cit concerns us all\u201d, they say.\u00a0First, the EMC sheds light on omnipresent news in their daily lives, through television but also through their digital hyperconnection (smartphone, tablet, social networks).\u00a0Then, they want to be prepared in these courses to become citizens.<\/p>\n For those furthest from the political world, they say they want to become \u201cgood adults\u201d.\u00a0For the others, they feel concerned by learning how to vote and understanding local and national political life.\u00a0They want to be able to “take over” in the public space, according to the expression of a pupil of CM2.<\/p>\n When civic education is offered to them, young people actually take it up.\u00a0For all of the 48 students questioned, the effects of the courses are positive with regard to their familiarization with the political world.\u00a0For many of them, these courses increase their appeal for political and civic subjects and develop a feeling of closeness to the institutional universe.\u00a0They also allow them to acquire technical knowledge and sharpen their critical thinking, but the observed effect is less pronounced.<\/p>\n To increase these cognitive effects of civic education, certain pedagogical practices are particularly appreciated and effective.\u00a0The screening of documentary films, such as that of Raymond Depardon,\u00a010\u1d49 chambre. Instants d’audience<\/em><\/a>\u00a0, on the functioning of judicial institutions, is an example.\u00a0The school visit to a public institution is another and not the least.\u00a0It is the pedagogy that elicits the most precise and lasting memories.<\/p>\n Town hall, National Assembly, courthouse: pupils who have visited one of these institutions find it easy to remember their name and use a specific vocabulary to recount their experience of the visit.\u00a0Beyond the description of concrete memories, the pupils manage to restore more abstract institutional mechanisms, such as the actions of the people sitting within the institution, and have the feeling of having learned \u201cmany things\u201d.\u00a0Moreover, these memories remain vivid over time.<\/p>\n Thus, through civic education, the school participates in developing the political competence and curiosity of young people.\u00a0Faced with these various findings, moving from the marginalization of CME to its rehabilitation, both in official directives and in class practices, could prove to be appropriate.<\/p>\nAt the heart of the democratic challenge<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\u201cIt concerns us all\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n\u201cEven before an [EMC course], I tell myself ‘it’s cool, we’re going to talk, we’re going to give our opinion, we’re going to learn new things’.\u00a0\u00bb<\/em><\/p>\nThe interest of school visits<\/strong><\/h4>\n