Abstract EN:

What should one think of the policy, launched in 1985, of “leading 80 percent of a generation to the baccalauréat”? One always hears people say that “the baccalauréat is worth nothing”. I wanted to know how one can arrive with a qualification believed to be worth nothing. In addition to historical data and national statistics, I have collected the educational and professional trajectories of “achievers of the baccalauréat by social engineering” (since the 1990s). This group consists of people who found themselves unable to go on to higher or further education due to an accumulation of gaps of knowledge during difficult school careers. I have taken into account both their educational and professional, subjective and objective experiences, reconstructed by interview. The “baccalauréat” is an intermediate; ambivalent qualification which, despite its devaluation, still constitutes a reasonable starting point for professional life, thanks to its value as cultural and symbolic capital. I have shown, by introducing a social comparison between middle class and immigrant working class children in order to account for intergenerational transmission of knowledge, how class differences at equivalent educational level alternate with generational resemblances. I found a “common condition of achievers of the baccalauréat” which reflects the landmark social changes (democratisation/devaluation of qualifications) and contrasts strongly with the experiences of the parent generation during the post war years until the 1970s (less education but better employment opportunities).