La fabrique des garçons : sanctions et genre au collège

In the five socially and culturally diverse secondary schools where this research was conducted, between 75,7% and 84,2% of the pupils disciplined were boys. They also represent between 84.2% and 97.7% of pupils disciplined for “violent conduct towards other pupils.” How are we to understand such an imbalance of the sexes? At the beginning of each school year the Ministry of Education reaffirms the principle of sexual equality and the negative effects of excessive punishment have been clearly shown for some time, yet this sexual imbalance still does not attract the attention of educational teams. Is there not here a clear paradox between the official egalitarian position and the daily practice to the contrary? And is this paradox not all the more flagrant when the idea of disciplinary sanctions is said to be ‘educational?’ The world of the secondary school is a place of interaction in time and space between the sexes as well as the establishment of gender stereotypes. This paper proposes placing the idea of gender variable at the centre in order to look again at the sanction system and at the transgressions to which it is applied in the light of social interaction between the sexes. On the one hand the pedagogical relationship a relation between sexes, on the other hand an appeal to virility and of heteronormativity encourages in boys attitudes of defiance, and of violent, homophobic and sexist conduct. In the secondary school, internal school rules have the force of law. Boys find themselves caught in a dual normative constraint. – that of internal rules and that of virility. The application of a disciplinary sanction is a form of ritual, organised both to designate the offender and to demonstrate the power of the punishing system, reinforced by the machinery of written documents which accompanies it, namely the official warnings, the recording in the sanctions register and the minutes of disciplinary hearings etc. The disciplinary sanction is a performative act which defines, confirms and consecrates the behaviour incriminated and, beyond this, the subject of the sanction. Finally, in stigmatising boys by the punishment it gives, does not the system of school punishment consecrate their masculine identity, while at the same time helping to construct what it seeks to correct?