The "Allegre crisis" and the counter-liberalist turn of the teaching protest in France
Résumé
In France, where the trade-union rate is the lowest in Europe, the educative policy community (Marsh and Rhodes, 1992) is still well represented, and shows a high level of mobilization : some authors have described the trade-unionism in this professional field as a "fortress", entirely devoided to the defense of corporate interests. But corporatist arguments are no longer legitimate when the unemployment strikes hardly the private sector, when a referential of rationalization is widely shared by the public managers of Education Nationale, when the modernization and the opening of the pedagogic apprenticeship is a "mot d'ordre" of most of teachers themselves. In this view, we propose to analyse the "Allegre Crisis" (1997, June - 1999, June) as a specific moment, during which traditional corporatist arguments are converted to a larger criticism of an invasive managerial rhetoric, and therefore benefit from a new legitimacy. "School is not a company", "education is not a commodity" : how the conflict against Allegre Ministry can explain the enlargement of these slogans in the educational field ? From a press review of two national daily papers and an examination of the trade-unionist litterature since 1997, we will try to describe the main stages through which a rhetoric work has succeeded, and encountered a large audience.