A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #345 - Culture, Read Grégory Chambat: When the far right dreams of becoming a school: A cultural and social battle (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

School is a real obsession for the far right, this is what Grégory 
Chambat shows us who offers us an overview of the attacks of the far 
right against school. To combat the extreme right in this area, it is 
necessary to know its harms but that is not enough. The author urges us 
to resume the educational fight for a truly emancipatory school. ---- In 
this short, but dense, work, Grégory Chambat, teacher and union 
activist, co-host of the magazine and website Questions declass(s), is 
the author of several works: on the extreme right to school, The school 
of react-publicains (Libertalia, 2016); on resistance at barracks 
schools: The school of barricades (Libertalia, 2014), Learning to 
disobey, a short history of the school that resists (with Laurence 
Biberfeld, Libertalia, new edition 2021) and Pedagogy and revolution. 
Class questions and educational proofreading (Libertalia, new edition 2015).

Suffice to say that the author masters his subject! As an extension of 
The School of Reac-Publicans, Grégory Chambat returns here to an often 
underestimated obsession of the far right: school. Indeed, the far right 
dreams of "setting a school", in the double sense of the term (when we 
see how the right and the macronie have strived to include in a single 
law on immigration all the ignominies of the far right we say that the 
first part of this program is already well underway).

A permanent obsession with the extreme right
To understand the "never denied interest" of the far right in school, we 
must, Grégory Chambat tells us, "return to its history and its fights 
for a school of submission and educational segregation". If school is a 
favored target of the far right it is because over the centuries the 
educational institution "has established itself as the guarantor of the 
established order".

Thus the history of this institution since the Revolution is that of a 
field of struggles between rare emancipatory aspirations (often on the 
side of teachers) and the desire to preserve and legitimize an 
established social order. This is not only the dream of reactionaries 
but also that of republicans such as Lamartine or Jules Ferry. In this 
story, one constant: making the educational institution responsible for 
the loss of greatness of France.

The Vichy laboratory
It was obviously under Vichy that the "school program" of the extreme 
right was implemented. It should be noted that teachers and professors 
were the first victims of the Vichy laws (even before the French state 
was declared!). There followed particular attention to educational 
issues, with schools having to be the spearhead of the "National 
Revolution" led by Pétain.

It is also on the school that the ideology of the contemporary extreme 
right was reconstructed around Grece (Research and Study Group for 
European Civilization) and its theoretical journal New School.

Identity education
The (long) list of those responsible for the decline in educational 
standards, seen from the far right, shows, implicitly, what education 
would be like for them. In the list of culprits, which Grégory Chambat 
gives us, we find: immigrants, educators, sociologists, historians, May 
68, trade unionists, woke people, feminists, the poor, the disabled ·es, 
the deviants, the misfits! Which constitutes "a form of recognition of 
the relevance of the fight of all those who are not satisfied with 
school as it is and fight for an emancipatory educational system in an 
egalitarian society" concludes the author.

Recalling that this school of the extreme right already exists in many 
countries, Grégory Chambat concludes by offering us ways to build the 
response. This fight will, according to him, be union, social, 
educational, historical, collective and cultural. A beneficial combat 
book to share widely in teachers' rooms and beyond!

David (UCL Savoies)

Grégory Chambat, When the far right dreams of becoming a school: A 
cultural and social battle, Éditions du Croquant, 130 pages, 10 euros.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Gregory-Chambat-Quand-l-extreme-droite-reve-de-faire-ecole-Une-bataille
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