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YOLANDE JANSEN

but in order to ‘‘s’autoconstituer comme sujet [constitute oneself as a subject].’’^24 Accord-
ing to Kintzler, this means that pupils get the opportunity—but are also obliged—to
distance themselves from all prerational, social, and religious forms of belonging. Pupils
should be encouraged to evaluate critically all kinds of worldviews without having to
decide to become a member of any particular one. In other words, public school is the
space wherelaı ̈cite ́realizes itself as an actual place:

Toute l’argumentation revient a`dire que les e ́le`ves pre ́sents a`l’e ́cole ne sont pas des

liberte ́s constitue ́es (comme c’est le cas des citoyens dans l’espace civil), mais des

liberte ́s en voie de constitution et que l’e ́cole est une institution productrice de la

liberte ́.

The whole argument boils down to the idea that the students present in the school

are not constituted liberties (as is the case with citizens in the public space), but

liberties that are in the process of being constituted, and that the school is an institu-

tion that produces freedom.^25

The Stasi committee gave a similar definition of whatlaı ̈cite ́should entail in the context
of public school, but it adds the making of thecitoyenin the process:

A` l’e ́cole de la Re ́publique sont accueillis non de simples usagers, mais des e ́le`ves

destine ́sa`devenir des citoyens e ́claire ́s.... [L’e ́cole] doit favoriser une mise a`distance

par rapport au monde re ́el pour en permettre l’apprentissage.

At the school of the Republic we do not welcome simple users but pupils destined to

become enlightened citizens.... [The school] must encourage a distancing from the

real world, to permit its being learnt. (4.2.2.1)

One criticism of Kintzler’s and the Stasi committee’s laı ̈cist arguments concerning
the role of public education might be that they present the transition fromappartenance
toautoconstitutionas something quite unproblematic that we can decide on when we pass
the threshold of the school. A critical reply from ‘‘within’’ to this advocacy of the school
as the place to constitute oneself as a subject, or acitoyen e ́claire ́, could be found in E ́mile
Durkheim’s rethinking of Kantian morality, which so inspired Republicans at the end of
the nineteenth century.^26 Figure 12, Grandjouan’s ‘‘Always the idols,’’ illustrates the enor-
mous force of (neo-)Kantian thought in the development of the official secular philoso-
phies of pedagogy at the turn of the nineteenth century. In this cartoon, Victor Hugo, the
hero of nineteenth-century anticlerical pedagogy, is carried aloft, accompanied by the
idols from both Republican and Catholic sides: Joan of Arc, Kantian morality, duty, the
moral law, and immortal principles. Durkheim was the first Republican professor of peda-

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