Normes et normativité en éducation: entre tradition et rupture ed. by Odile Schneider-Mizony, Maurice Sachot (review)

Reviews 199 (Isabella Kalinowski on René Char), or, for example, how German exile texts are being translated today (Roussel and Schulte on Anna Seghers), these articles emphasize the social role of literature and language during times of national crisis. Equally of interest is Patrice Arnaud’s essay in which he provides a linguistic portrait of the 600,000 Frenchmen who were sent to Nazi Germany as forced laborers between 1942 and 1945. Concluding that the majority of these Frenchmen did not know German beforehand,he describes the strategies that helped them cope in the foreign language and the rational and political success behind each choice. Pennsylvania State University Bettina Brandt Schneider-Mizony, Odile, et Maurice Sachot, éd. Normes et normativité en éducation: entre tradition et rupture. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2011. ISBN 978-2-29656856 -3. Pp. 188. 19 a. The eleven contributors to this volume seek to interrogate the epistemological construct of the “norm,” with the goal of destabilizing its signification. Such a move is critical: rather than belonging to the domain of uncontested sacral dogma, norms serve to mediate between subject and object. Moreover, they are socially constructed, or more precisely, politically motivated instruments of control and authority, whose articulation and adoration generate considerable academic capital. This admixture of discourses—religious, political, social, and pedagogical—reflects the multiple methodological approaches deployed by the authors, whose ranks contain sociologists, philosophers, and romanistes, as well as scholars representing the fields of philology, education, English, German, and history. In order to synthesize their contributions, I will address their shared metaphors, the most important of which associates norms with religious authority, signifying magical, arbitrary, and powerful control. Thus, the “normativity” governing philosophy dissertations during the early twentieth century submits to “faith-based” criteria: “On leur demandait de propager une foi. Il serait facile de jouer ici sur le registre du religieux, avec toute la chaîne (orthodoxie, conversion , vulgate, dogme, hérésie, excommunication” (24). The pretention to “orthodoxy ” in the practitioner’s devotion to the Portfolio européen des langues is deemed an act of faith (82). Teachers are confounded with clergy, learners with believers, and the Council of Europe seeks the salvation of souls among the sorry class of mortals (82). But religious faith is ineluctably associated with power. And power, as formulated in that common albeit impoverished expression, corrupts. Thus, innocent/gratuitous formulations become invested in the political act that dictates the inclusion/exclusion of the reflective practitioner, by virtue of the warning“Big brother is watching you, ou le Portfolio comme instrument de contrôle” (81). Precepts that initially seduce the instructor inevitably surrender to local institutional exigencies and personal prises de conscience:“Suivront-ils le chemin habituel des innovations pédagogiques, c’est-à-dire l’oubli après une brève période d’hubris didactique, ou bien sont-ils là pour influencer l’enseignement des langues dans la durée?” (71). Although the studies in this volume reflect political, economic, and pedagogical concerns within a European context, the take-away is far more universal. Pedagogical orthodoxy is the order of the day within the American academic context as well: consider the sacred/political space populated by the proliferation of guidelines, standards and“authorized”curricula. Caveat lector: the variety of disciplinary approaches may strike a discordant note, or worse, discourage a more global reading. Granted, the contemporary philosophy professor’s anxieties over disserto-centrisme (43) seem unrelated to the philologist’s etymological preoccupations. Transcending these discipline-specific exempla, the contributors to this volume succeed admirably in contesting the notion of norm as revealed doctrine, and convince us of the urgency in identifying and resolving the disconnect between non-privileged practice and a factitious global consensus. Cabrillo College/Graduate Theological Union (CA) H. Jay Siskin Simonin, Jacky. Parcours d’un sociolinguiste: banlieue nord de Paris/La Réunion. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012. ISBN 978-2-336-00101-2. Pp. 328. 33,50 a. This book depicts the journey of the sociolinguist Jacky Simonin, a professor at Université Paris-Nord Villetaneuse in the 1970s and later at Université de La Réunion. “La recherche c’est bien un combat”(191), he once said, addressing doctoral students. Simonin’s work looked...