L’orientation scolaire : choisir ou s’adapter ?

Overview & Synopsis

Far from being a purely school-based approach to careers and training, careers guidance is increasingly having to deal with the resurgence of traditional questions (should we promote the practice of filling courses, at the risk of reproducing their social make-up? Should we encourage pupils to anticipate their professional future, thereby subjecting the education system to the projected changes in the labour markets?), as well as the emergence of more recent questions about gender-based inequalities in career paths, the self-censorship of pupils from working-class backgrounds, the educational and professional inclusion of pupils with disabilities, and so on. By individualising their support and recognising the importance of personal development in the making of educational choices and what they allow, the guidance counsellors of the French Ministry of National Education – who have become the psychologists of the French Ministry of National Education since the circular of April 2017 – are in their own way consolidating a psychologising conception of the pupil’s “project”. As prescribers of institutional guidance in a school sector under fire from critics and open to other forms of intervention, are they not an example of an “impossible profession” and mission at a time when the school institution is constantly seeking to recompose itself?