Feature
No.44
May 2005
 
    

School Physical Education in France: the Double Inconstancy: A French Perspective
Gilles Klein, France
 

Introduction
This contribution to the post-Berlin Physical Education Summit developments in physical education draws on Marivaux’s early 18th century cynicism of “Double Inconstancy”, which represents a metaphor of conflict of interpretations between humanistic values and political power in order to examine physical education in France. Within the international context, this conflict is illustrated by the Worldwide Survey (Hardman and Marshall, 2000) conducted before the Berlin Summit and more generally by the recent works published by Hardman (2003, 2004) that placed physical education between promise and reality at the end of the 20th century.
Consideration of physical education within the French school situation, more generally within European educational systems, the analysis leads to three broad issues: (i) the conflict between promise and reality relates to the prescribed and the actual curriculum, that is what is programmed and is in effect taught in France; (ii) in accordance with the metaphor of the ‘Double Inconstancy’, physical education policies in France from 1968 to 2004 show at least two kinds of infidelity from policy-makers; and (iii) the French ‘Double Inconstancy’ can be explained by the crisis in public services – notably in the area of education – at the end of the 20th century, within a context of European enlargement and globalisation.

1. School Physical Education in France: Promise and Reality
In the survey on the state and status of PE within the international context, Hardman and Marshall (2000) cite, in relation to France, a French scholar who observes “the application of official policy requirement is but a beautiful dream is linked with 72% of elementary schools having less than two PE lessons per week”. What are the French promise and reality?
a) The formal curriculum at primary school
Children between 6 and 10 years old are taught by 314, 927 generalist school teachers, who teach PE. The decree of February 22nd 1995, defines a time-table with 6 hours per week out of around 26 hours with possible variations. The curricula published in 2002 define four kinds of attainments in five activity areas.
b) Effective curriculum at primary school
The mean physical education teaching time per week is 2.12 hours; some 20 per cent of teachers teach two hours per week; about 8 per cent of teachers teach more than 4 hours per week; around 72 per cent have between two and four hours of physical education teaching. One teacher out of 5 remains within the walls of school. The teachers can receive support from external professionals, generally sports educators employed by local authorities. More than 50 per cent of ‘generalist’ teachers ask for the support given by a specialist colleague or an external collaborator.
c) Formal curriculum at secondary school
During the “collège” and the “lycée” stages, the students aged 11 to 17 are taught by 31,124 specialist physical education teachers. The time-tables are fixed at 3 or 4 hours in “collège” and 2 hours in “lycées”. Some complementary teaching is proposed in the “lycée”. The programmes written for 2000-2004 define four types of attainments in 5 activity areas.
d) Real curriculum in “lycée”
The recent reform of the French General Certificate of Education illustrates the current situation of physical education. On the one hand, there is a pre-occupation with national homogeneity: since a national decision taken in April 2002, each student sits a compulsory examination in physical education, the main characteristics of which are that each student chooses three tests within a national benchmark with 23 tests in several activity areas and each candidate presents his/her performance in front of two teacher assessors. In 2003, only 4.3% were assessed as totally unsatisfactory and 3% as partially unsatisfactory. One the other hand, there is a pre-occupation with local flexibility: complementary tests are proposed regarding regional specificity.
Consequently, five years after the Berlin Summit, French physical education is not just a beautiful dream. It is in favourable position for two reasons: a complete curricular renewal since the passage of responsibility from the Ministry of Sport to the Ministry of Education in 1982; and an actual curriculum close to the official recommendations through the guarantee of national norms with quality control. Only PE at primary school remains in a more variable situation.

2. Marivaux’s Metaphor: the Double French Inconstancy
Since the Second World War, French physical education has been in the centre of tension between promise and reality (Klein, 1997, 2003). Successive governments, liberal or socialist, have shown several signs of infidelity with regard to the subject. The major infidelity concerns the liberal governments from the end of the 1960s to the beginning of the 1970s, when the governments looked for a disengagement from an offer of physical education for all. During these years, the subject was under the aegis of a Secretary of State. After 1968 with the social movement, the public authorities illustrated the paradox between promise and reality. A Secretary of State declared in 1968: “At school through physical education one should develop a taste for sport”; and later in 1972: “sport at school is a totally unsuccessful”. The solutions were to be found outside of school. In order to realise these, teachers were transferred from educational institutions to sports organisations. The timetable decreased from 5 hours to 3 or 2 hours. Another Secretary of State within the Chirac government declared in 1973: “PE is dull and excessively traditional, the priority should be given to sport in schools”.
The second inconstancy comes from the successive socialist governments. After 1981 the socialist governments privileged school PE: “In order to develop physical activities in the global society, all pass through school”. In that, during the 1980s and 1990s, when PE was facing an international crisis, several political decisions favoured the subject: the passage of responsibility from the Ministry of Sport to the Ministry of Education, the creation of an academic subject in sports sciences, re-evaluation of PE jobs, increasing of financial support, renewal of curricula etc. However during the 1990s, the whole French education reformed its discourse. More and more education is not considered as humanist learning accessible for all. It should be considered as a service provided for the economic world (European Round Table, 1995). In the new orientation, school education is conceived as a business concern. A new discourse founded on a managerial thinking is applied to school and to educational thinking. School only provides a basic (foundation) culture. Each one should complete this initial development through life-long learning. Otherwise, school provides not only knowledge but also it develops generic competencies, such as adaptability, capacity to communicate, team work, that reinforce human and social capital. French school physical education followed these orientations. The Minister looked to transform the subject into a facultative one. The programmes published in 2000-2003 were constructed on the basis of generic competencies useful in the framework of life-long learning.

3. Marivaux’s Cynical Postulation: Physical Education and the Inconstancy of States
In order to explain the French situation in 2004, more generally the European PE situation, it is necessary to enlarge the angle of view. The evolution of PE, as the evolution of educational, social and cultural policies at the beginning of the 21st century, depends on two political and economical factors: the reduction in public services and the globalisation of education. Historically, the public utility services stem from the state’s will to compensate for the market’s failures. The intervention of public power runs complementary to the market’s dynamic. The public authority brings social politics into play in order to remedy the development of inequalities as well as to meet the satisfaction of fundamental needs and the production of public welfare. However, at the end of 20th century, state intervention was perceived as excessive and unfruitful.
Public action must evolve facing two paradoxical kinds of evolution: a) society evolves on a large scale such as European integration or internationalisation of economies and societies; and b) evolution is on a small scale in view of the importance of territories and of a micro-social approach. In this context of globalisation and decentralisation, the evolution produces some difficulties for the educational public services, with physical education perhaps as the first target?
As shown by utilitarianism sociology, all the areas of social life are contaminated by the installation of neo-liberal opinions, that hold values of competition and diffuse a new discourse on European and global scales. In the neo-liberal age, education aims for life-long learning of the wage earner, the transmission of competencies and operative knowledge for an activity appreciated as socially useful and corresponding to the labour market. Accompanying this shift, the global organisations (World Bank and World Trade Organisation) and European (ODCE and European Commission) shape new values of education and sport. To be sure these organisations always flaunt values of development of the human being. However, new orientations replace it that reinforce a basic culture of employability, life-long learning and social cohesion. Education and learning become narrow and bound to social and macro-economical policies.
With the Anglo-Saxon notion of human and social capital, society does not ensure a broad education for all. But it depends on each one fruitfully using his/her capital in order to ameliorate his/her professional position and transfer the benefits to the whole of society. The pre-occupation with economic efficiency passes beyond cultural transmission. In this orientation, education through sport more than PE has held a good position. It is transmitted less and less in the framework of school-based education and more during extra-curricular and outside-school times under the aegis of local authorities and sports associations.

Conclusion
French physical education lies at the centre of a French paradox. On the one side, the situation is favourable after 20 years of integration within the Ministry of Education and consideration as compulsory academic subject-matter. On the other side, physical education is an object of infidelity by successive governments, liberal and socialist. The “double inconstancy” of the public authorities has depended in the past on a tendency to externalise a physical culture outside of schools. More recently, in a context of globalisation, of Europeanisation and localisation, states move from engagement in public education services and reduce services more generally. Then a new inconstancy depends on the global movement to externalise and individualise education from educational institutions to sports organisations. If the globalisation risks do have negative consequences for physical education, the time is coming to develop co-operation between non-governmental organisations persuaded by the notion of the equalisation of basic knowledge for all in the area of sport and physical education for all.

References
Fournier, J., Bauby, P., Savary, G., Soulage, B., (2003) Vers un nouvel équilibre entre besoins et marché, Les notes de la Fondation Jean Jaurès, n° 35, juillet 2003.
Hardman, K. (2003) The State and Status of Physical Education in Schools: Foundation for Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Physical Education, in Hardman, K. (ed) Physical Education: Deconstruction and Reconstruction – Issues and Directions, Sport Science Studies, 12, pp. 15-34.
Hardman, K. Promise or Reality? Physical Education in Schools in Europe, Compare (in press).
Hardman, K. and Marshall, J.J., (2000) World-wide Survey of the State and Status of School Physical Education, Final Report, University of Manchester: Campus Print Ltd.
ICSSPE/CIEPSS (2001) World Summit on Physical Education, Proceedings, Berlin: ICSSPE.
Klein, G. (1997) Physical Education Policy: a compromise between political realism and pedagogical humanism, Journal of Comparative Physical Education and Sport, XIX (1).
Klein, G. (2003) A Future for Physical Education within the International Context : Institutional Fragility or Collective Adjustment, in Hardman, K. (ed) Physical Education : Deconstruction and Reconstruction – Issues and Directions, Sport Science Studies, 12, 153-170.
Laval, C. (2003), L’école n’est pas une entreprise, le néo-libéralisme à l’assaut de l’enseignement public, Paris: La Découverte.
Lebaron, F. (2003) Le Savant, le Politique et la Mondialisation, Éditions du Croquant.
OCDE, (2001) Du bien-être des nations : le rôle du capital humain et social, Paris: OCDE.
Putnam, R.D., (2004) Education, Diversity, Social Cohesion and “Social Capital”, meeting of OECD Education Ministers, Raising the Quality of Learning for All, 18-19 March 2004, Dublin.

Gilles Klein
University Paul Sabatier,
Toulouse, France




http://www.icsspe.org/portal/bulletin-may2005.htm