Towards a debate on what families do to school

Abstract

This article looks at the complicities between family and school - the two educational agencies par excellence in modern society - and discusses the relationship between them with an analytical focus on one of its meanings. If one accepts that the (theoretical and empirical) field of sociology of education has stayed away from the family as a locus of educational endeavour, and at the same time regrets its abdication and loss of educational function to school, this article seeks, by contrast, to revive the proposition that there has historically been an effective complicity between family realities and representations and modern schooling, but above all to argue for the notion that «the family is inside the school». Having taken the unilateral decision to stress the role of the family, I propose to show how school profoundly reflects the (unequal) inheritance of family lives, of family socialization which takes place before, outside and despite school, and of family management of schooling.