School Physical Education in France: the Double
Inconstancy:
A French Perspective
Gilles Klein, France |
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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.
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Gilles Klein
University Paul Sabatier,
Toulouse, France

http://www.icsspe.org/portal/bulletin-may2005.htm
School Physical Education in France: the Double
Inconstancy:
An French Perspective
Gilles Klein, France
|