Making a modernist pedagogy: changes in elementary and pre-elementary schooling

Present primary public education in France originated in the école républicaine of the nineteenth century. Starting in the 1960s, the primary school has become integrated into a system of education, with virtually all children now attending pre-elementary and secondary education. These structural changes have led to important alterations in the curriculum of pre-elementary and elementary schools: their traditional pedagogical specificity has diminished in response to a relatively new requirement of curriculum continuity and the overall aim of preparing for future schooling. On the whole, however, this level of schooling is characterized by modernistic pedagogy, the importance it gives to children's harmonious growth and the psycho-affective nature of the teacher-pupil relationship. Although inequalities in socio-economic status between children have not disappeared, new directives aim to limit the inegalitarian mechanisms at work through decentralized compensatory measures and teamwork inside schools.