A Secular Cooperative School. Can it Promote an Inclusive Education and Society

TLDR: Zay et al. as mentioned in this paper proposed a cooperative school inspired by the spirit of the Council of Europe directives and developing social ties based on differences, and compared the advantages and failures of the French republican secular school with others.

Abstract: This article is based on the French report and the European comparative results of an international project about inclusive education supported by the European Commission. It focuses on one of the main issues and the specific methodology of the French report. The globalisation has led to face the issue of making life together possible for native and immigrant populations on the same soil. How to build a common citizenship, with the same rights and duties, for diverse populations separated by their birth community, religion, history, customs and traditions? Which kind of education, and which kind of school are able to elaborate a new common heritage for citizens-to-be? Through research results, the paper compares the advantages and failures of the French republican secular school with others. It resumes the French conclusions to propose a cooperative school inspired by the spirit of the Council of Europe directives and developing social ties based on differences. Keywords: inclusive education, cooperative school, partnership, otherness, tailor-made measures, community development, secularity ___________________________________________________ 1 University of Charles de Gaulle Lille 3, 3 Rue Barreau, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Lille, France. Email: danielle.zay@daniellezay.fr A Secular Cooperative School Danielle Zay ITALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION, 1, 2012. 89 Introduction: main issues and methodology In a world enhanced by globalisation, all countries are both rooted in their history and boosted by ideas coming from the economic leader countries and their medias, in particular the United States, that is to say, by now, a democratic manner of living and governing. To-day, the intellectual middles and young people claim for liberty and lead other citizens to follow them in islamic countries considered by the western people as more conservative than themselves. We are far from a clash of civilizations. Inside each country, in north and south, west and east, as well as between countries, the clash is mainly provoked by the growing inequalities of income, and more and more people around the world become aware of it. But the opportunity of finding scape goats is offered too by an increasing immigration of southern and eastern people looking for better conditions of life in the wealthiest countries, for instance in Western Europe. The Council of Europe raised the question to its 47 member states: how to respond to diversity? (Council of Europe, 2008). It is a challenge for applying their democratic principles and a test for their vision of the society of the future. Which choices will they make ? A society of segregated communities, marked at best by the coexistence of majorities and minorities with differentiated rights and responsibilities, loosely bound together by mutual ignorance and stereotypes? Or is it a vibrant and open society without discrimination, benefiting us all, marked by the inclusion of all residents in full respect of their human rights? (p. 1). The Council of Europe represents the EU (European Union) countries. They are supposed to follow its principles reminded in all its publications, i. e. fostering societies based on solidarity, “maintaining and developing the unity A Secular Cooperative School Danielle Zay ITALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION, 1, 2012. 90 and diversity of European societies”, in particular through education (Arnesen et al., 2008). Nonetheless, the EU countries do not follow the same paradigms of society and education, neither in their policies nor in their ideologies or their customs (Cousins, 1998; Zay, 2005 ab Zay, 2009). The project aim assigned by the European Commission’s DirectorateGeneral for Education and Culture was to analyze, assess and, then, select priority measures and “good practices” that enhanced the opportunities of disadvantaged pupils and the inclusion and chances of discriminated groups of pupils, such as e.g. minority children and/or immigrant children. Synchronic data drawn from national and international policies statements, documents, laws, rules and statistics were not sufficient. They were completed by diachronic data, in particular collected through cases studies, based on 2 Procurement procedure EAC/10/2007–Lot 3 “Strategies for supporting schools and teachers in order to foster social inclusion”, dated 9 August 2007, contract-2007-2094/001 TRA-TRSPO. The project started effectively on 16 December 2007 and was concluded on 16 August 2009, by submitting the reports to the Commission. The reports were accepted by the Commission on 12 October 2009 and disseminated through its website. Dr George Muskens, research director at DOCA Bureaus, The Netherlands, was project leader of the research consortium INTMEAS that has carried out the research assignment. Drafts of his final comparative report benefited from comments and advice from the consortium’s reference group members and from other experts in this field. The INTMEAS consortium – Inclusion and education in European countries gathered round him researchers from ten participating countries: France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom (England and Scotland) representing
a reasonable sample of the EU member States in terms of size, educational systems and inclusion index. A Secular Cooperative School Danielle Zay ITALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION, 1, 2012. 91 longitudinal analyses and assessments during a longer period, at least two years until five years or more. The French report follows the same methodology and targets with the final comparative report and ten national reports. But, inside the general methodology, it chooses to develop the successful factors for an inclusive education through four case studies more detailed than in other national reports and proposing alternative solutions to the mainstreaming ways of teaching. They are called alternative because they are based upon a cooperative school model. However, the case studies observe the framework of the national secular model too, which remains at the heart of practice. Indeed, it was particularly meaningful because they were all led in socioeconomically deprived areas including important Muslim populations mainly from North Africa. The methodology in all reports is founded upon: 1) A review of ongoing comparative and national research on education and social inclusion measures, 1980 onwards 2) An inventory of relevant scientific publications 3) Case studies. The selection of references is inspired by the concept of inclusive education as “a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all learners through increasing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and reducing exclusion within and from education” (UNESCO, 2005, p. 13). The corpus consists of research and inquiries’ results already published in books or refereed reviews, or disseminated in reports through websites, and of specific case studies, which, in the French final report, were elaborated by specialists in relation to the project research themes. It also includes indicators and statistics collected in the ten countries participating in the project and in others. The following documentation has been gathered together on measures