Socialization and ressocialization: educational policy for the lower classes

Abstract

Starting out from the concerns and paradoxes associated with the issue of authority in «last chance» schools, this article demonstrates that there are three key facts in the relationship between office-holders and pupils in these schools: ignorance (of the pupils' cultural worlds), confrontation and improvisation. Questions as to what discipline a school can impose in terms of socialization of the lower classes, and through whom, lead to a sociology which is critical the word «ressocialization», much in vogue in the public policy arena, and puts forward some suggestions for a social anthropology of disorder in schools.