Focusing on permanent education idea in France in the sixties and its progressive decline

Overview & Synopsis

Between 1948 and 1959, several laws were implemented in order to introduce a first coherence in the adult education device. In the same time, a new idea, this of éducation permanente (permanent education) was emerging and getting sense in different social spheres. Before detailing the content, the dissemination then the decline of this idea, we would like to stress the tremendous hope of social transformation that many social actors put in the permanent education project. Through permanent education it was question to take up the challenge of the educative system crisis, to change the pedagogic relation, to “awake”, to open to a richer life... Permanent education, that was for some of these actors the main of 1971 law will, under economical pressure and stakes, be relegated in the background, then progressively forgotten to the benefit of other more narrow and immediate aims