Religion and Realism: Some Reflections on Durkheim's. L'Évolution pédagogique en Franc / Religion et réalisme. Réflexions sur L'Évolution pédagogique en France de Durkheim - article ; n°1 ; vol.69, pg 69-89

Robert Alunjones

Description

Archives des sciences sociales des religions - Année 1990 - Volume 69 - Numéro 1 - Pages 69-89
21 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Archives-des-sciences-sociales-des-religions
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1990
• Nombre de lectures: 15
• Langue: Français
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Robert Alun Jones
Religion and Realism: Some Reflections on Durkheim's.
L'Évolution pédagogique en Franc / Religion et réalisme.
Réflexions sur L'Évolution pédagogique en France de Durkheim
In: Archives des sciences sociales des religions. N. 69, 1990. pp. 69-89.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Jones Robert Alun. Religion and Realism: Some Reflections on Durkheim's. L'Évolution pédagogique en Franc / Religion et
réalisme. Réflexions sur L'Évolution pédagogique en France de Durkheim. In: Archives des sciences sociales des religions. N.
69, 1990. pp. 69-89.
doi : 10.3406/assr.1990.1315
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/assr_0335-5985_1990_num_69_1_1315Sc soc des Rel 1990 69 janvier-mars) 69-89 Arch
Robert Alun JONES
RELIGION AND REALISM
SOME REFLECTIONS ON
VOLUTION DAGOGIQUE EN FRANCE
connus volution de la pensée pédagogique de Durkheim en France tels que éclaire son anti-cléricalisme des aspects peu ou
son engagement en faveur de école laïque On sait que Durkheim
considérait glise médiévale comme le dépositaire de certaines
vérités fondamentales la nécessité de former homme total
interpénétration de la foi et de la raison dans la philosophie
scolastique et par dessus tout idée chrétienne du devoir inverse
il en prit la Renaissance et aux Lumières pour leur interprétation
sociologiquement incohérente du Moyen-Age pour leur intérêt ex
cessif porté au goût élégance et au style pour leur adoption des
valeurs païennes origine de la corruption du sens du devoir hérité
du christianisme enfin pour leur mentalité mathématique qui
aboutit un goût trop simplificateur pour les généralisations et
abstraction
En fait les mérites que Durkheim reconnaît au réalisme pédagogique
de Comenius Leibniz Windt et de fa on plus générale au protes
tantisme allemand opposé au formalisme du Moyen-Age et de la
Renaissance constituent le contexte partir duquel il énon sa
célèbre injonction considérer les faits sociaux comme des choses
est partir de là aussi qu il en appela un nouveau rationa
lisme plus inductif complexe historique et par-dessus tout plus
attentif importance première des choses que ne était le rationa
lisme dépassé un Descartes
In 1902 after lengthy parliamentary inquiry into secondary education led
by Louis Liard course in educational theory was created and immediately
required of all candidates for the agrégation at the University of Paris Not without
difficulty Liard persuaded Durkheim to take on the responsibility and the course
was taught at the cole Normale Supérieure each year from 1904 to 1913 But
there can be little doubt of Durkhein commitment to the project itself
constant skeptic of those reforms which lacking supportive moral infra
structure were merely political Durkheim argued that the regulations and
69 ARCHIVES DE SCIENCES SOCIALES DES RELIGIONS
decrees of the previous twenty years would have no authority unless they have
been proposed planned publicised and in some way pleaded for by informed
opinion unless they express it in thoughtful clear and co-ordinated way
instead of trying to create and control it through the medium of officialdom
Ideals cannot be legislated into existence Durkheim added echoing Rousseau
they must be understood loved and striven for by those whose duty is to realise
them 3)
To this end Durkheim designed course that was both theoretical and
historical The theory was important because it was not enough to tell teachers
what to do in addition they must be made to understand -why they were doing
it And it was historical because educational reform itself presupposed the
genetic method Durkheim had described inLes Règles de la méthode sociologique
1895) In order to fully understand the development of any living phenome
non Durkheim now repeated in order to explain the different forms which it
assumes at successive moments in its history we should need to begin by
discovering the composition of the initial germ which stands at the origin of its
entire evolution. Thus in order to understand the way in which the educational
system which we are to study has developed in order to understand what it has
become we must not shrink from tracing it to its most remote origins 5)
Beginning with these most remote origins therefore Durkheim traced the
development of educational thought from Scholasticism through Humanism
down to modem Realism Only the third ultimately
insisted could meet the needs of the Third French Republic and in this sense the
work supports the interpretation of Lukes for example who emphasizes
aggressive secularism his desire to establish and inculcate doc
trine that would replace and not compromise with religion But volution
pédagogique en France also reveals deep appreciation of the influence
of the medieval Church on French education 7) his largely negative assessment
of the subsequent contributions of the Renaissance and Enlightenment and his
ongoing debt to German realism and empiricism The resulting view of
Durkheim is that of considerably more subtle complex and even romantic
figure significantly influenced by Christian thought disdainful of Humanism
ambivalent toward Cartesian rationalism and receptive to the latest advances of
German science
SCHOLASTICISM THE PREEMINENCE OF BOOKS
From his very first lecture Durkheim reminded his audience of at least four
major contributions made by the Christian Church to French education From its
origins he observed medieval thought was both Roman and Christian 8)
contradictory bequest that had fateful consequences The Roman origins of
Christianity meant that its language culture and social organization were irre
mediably pagan but where pagan religion was above all system of ritual
practices backed up no doubt with mythology but vague inconsistent and
without any expressly obligatory authority Christianity was an idealistic
religion system of ideas and body of doctrines To be Christian Durkheim
thus observed was not matter of carrying out certain material operations
according to the traditional prescriptions it was rather question of adhering to
70 RELIGION AND REALISM
certain articles of faith of showing certain beliefs of accepting certain ideas
Moreover unlike the handing down of traditional practices the communication
of Christian ideas and feelings required distinctively Christian education and
hence the cathedral and monastery schools but education in tum required
culture and the only culture was pagan Teaching and preaching Durkheim
explained presuppose in him who is teaching or certain linguistic
skills certain familiarity with man and with history All this knowledge was to
be found only in the work of the ancients 10)
These remarks had contemporary resonance for one argument of
Durkhein fellow reformers had been that the Church had seized the schools
in order to prevent any culture from embarrassing the faith The real truth
Durkheim insisted to the contrary was that the schools began by being the work
of the Church it is the Church which called them into existence with the result
that they found themselves from the moment of their birth one might even say
from the point of their conception stamped with an ecclesiastical character
which they subsequently had so much difficulty in erasing 11 Moreover it was
essential that it do so for only the Church with its pagan materialist past and
future idealist orientation could serve as bridge between the Roman
Germanic societies But if the schools thus began be being essentially religious
the pagan origins of Christianity also assurred that they would contain an
uneliminable element of secularity Feeble and rudimentary to begin with
Durkheim observed this secular spirit grew developed from being in the
background it passed gradually into the foreground but it existed from the very
beginning Like the aboriginal institutions described in The Elementary Forms of
the Religious Life therefore from their origins the schools carried within them
selves the germ of that great struggle between the sacred and the profane the
secular and the religious... 12)
The second contribution was the peculiarly organic quality of Christian
education In antiquity the goal of education had been to transmit number of
specific talents which might be learned from variety of different teachers 13
But Christianity by contrast was certain attitude of the soul. certain habitus
of our moral being an idea epitomized in the Christian idea unknown to
antiquity of conversion that profound movement whereby the soul in its
entirety by turning in quite different direction changes its position its stance
and as result modifies its whole outlook on the world 14 Imbued with this
idea Christianity
developed an awareness that underlying the particular condition of our intel
ligence and sensibility there is in each one of us more profound condition which
determines the others and g