Finie la lecture ? lire au college, lire au lycee : une enquete longitudinale

Is reading over ? reading in junior high school, reading in high school: a longitudinal survey

• Auteur / Autrice : Christine Détrez
• Direction : Christian Baudelot
• Type : Thèse de doctorat
• Discipline(s) : Sociologie
• Date : Soutenance en 1998
• Etablissement(s) : Paris, EHESS

Résumé

Cette etude repose sur une enquete longitudinale par questionnaires envoyes a 1200 eleves tires d'un panel de l'education nationale, a laquelle s'ajoute une serie d'entretiens. Elle vise a analyser l'evolution des pratiques de lecture des adolescents pendant quatre ans, au cours de cette periode decisive qui couvre la fin du college et les annees de lycee. L'enquete replace la lecture a la fois dans le contexte des pratiques de loisirs, marquees a cet age par la suprematie de la sociabilite amicale et de la musique, et dans celui de l'enseignement scolaire. Or, quelles que soient leur appartenance sociale, leur identite sexuelle et leur situation scolaire, les adolescents lisent peu, et, au cours de l'enquete, de moins en moins. Certes, le trio d'excellence ne varie guere : les filles surtout, les bons eleves et les enfants issus de milieux favorises lisent davantage que les autres, mais la baisse des pratiques ne les epargne pas. Si la concurrence des activites de groupe dans la repartition des activites de loisirs de l'adolescent est indeniable, le role de l'ecole doit egalement etre souligne. Dans le passage du college au lycee, elle pose en effet comme antithetiques deux modes d'appropriation qui, souvent, s'associent dans les pratiques observees : un mode de lecture ordinaire, aux vertus a la fois morales et pratiques, qui releve de processus d'identification et d'investissements concrets, et un mode de lecture savant, fonde sur l'interpretation et la distanciation. Plutot qu'a une crise generale et sans appel de la lecture, les resultats de cette enquete amenent a conclure a la fin d'une etape, parmi d'autres, de la deja longue histoire de la lecture, et a l'affaiblissement du modele de la lecture humaniste et cultivee, toujours minoritaire dans les pratiques, mais longtemps seule reference de la lecture scolaire.

This research is based on a longitudinal survey made through questionnaires sent to 1 200 high school students selected from a pool by the education nationale. It has been completed by a series of interviews. Its purpose is to analyze the evolution of the reading practices of adolescents over a period of four years, during this crucial time period embracing the end of college and the years in lycee. The survey puts reading back into the context of leisure practices, characterized at that age by the supremacy of a sociability based on friendship and music, and into the context of school teaching. Now, irrespective of social background, gender, or school situation, teenagers do not read much, and over the course of the survey, they read less and less. True, the top trio does not vary much: girls for the most part, good students, and children of wealthy families read more than others, but they are not spared by the decline in reading habits. If the competing role played by group activities in the distribution of the teenager's leisure activities is undeniable, the responsibility of the school system needs to be emphasized too. During the transition from college to lycee, the school system establishes as antithetical two modes of appropriation that are often associated in the practices observed: an ordinary mode of reading, with practical and moral virtues, characterized by a process of identification and concrete investments, and a scholarly way of reading, based on interpretation and distanciation. Rather than to a general and definitive crisis of reading practices, the results of this study point to the end of one stage, among others, of the already long history of reading, and to the weakening of the model of the humanist and learned practice of reading, always in the minority in practice, but for a long time the only reference for reading in the school system.