Everyday Educational Practices in Paris Self-Managed High School

Abstract

In this chapter, I introduce and analyze the various data sets collected in my fieldwork inside the school institution, such as my field notes from three ‘general assemblies’, classroom interaction in an English class, the posters and notes I noticed on the school grounds, a comic strip published by the school to represent an event of struggle between LAP and the State authorities, and half-hour long semi-structured interviews with different actors. The texts in relation to particular events analyzed in this section will be distributed into two main categories, broadly divided according to a macro/micro axis this time within LAP. I also analyze the promotional book published by LAP, Une Fabrique de Libertés (A Freedom Factory), published by the school in 2012 to explain and promote its central values and functioning to the general public, the potential and actual parents considering the enrolment of their children in LAP and the prospective students. The discussion of these different sets of data foregrounded the issue of trust between students and teachers. The discussion determined that the passivity of students is taken for granted in most decision-making processes, which leads students to express themselves more freely in other spaces of the school, such as the common areas, or in specific pedagogical activities like classes.