Promotion de la laïcité à l’école et entreprise de moralisation : une équivalence ?

Abstract

Certain student behaviors seem to call into question what is commonly seen as minimal elements for living together. The French school has a strong tendency to resort to the concept of secularism as a means of preventing these attitudes but also as a means of sanctioning them. In this sense, it can be said that laïcité is a tool to (re) construct a morality that would have become defective. In this article, I intend to discuss the effectiveness and timeliness of this project. I will rely on a distinction between what is shocking, what is immoral and what is illegal. In particular, I shall develop the idea that the relation to "values" can not be a determinant of behavior, but rather a resource among others to (justify) an action or to rationalize it. I will conclude by questioning the opportunity for a systematic mobilization of secular value as a means of understanding and responding to these attitudes telescoping republican values.

Keywords

• secularism
• school education
• philosophy of education
• moral philosophy