Discipline and order. The French school as a field of intangible cultural heritage

This study deals with the operating culture and communication of the French school as intangible cultural heritage and as a cultural heritage process. The elements of the intangible culture that go back several generations, such as good manners, strict discipline and persistent working, have been chosen to be preserved in the cultural heritage process. The key concept is the heritage community. In my study, it is formed by the actors of the school and consists of the pupils, teachers, assistants, parents, and school inspectors, and in the larger perspective the school administration that decides the curriculum. The tradition of discipline and punishment is very strong in France and it is put into practice both at home and at school. The dissertation approaches the operating culture and the communication at the French school via four cultural dimensions created by social psychologist Geert Hofstede. Brought into focus in the school context are among other things power distance, an approach to authority, and the avoidance of uncertainty. The frame of reference for the cultural heritage of discipline and punishment is philosopher Michel Foucault’s analysis of the power that is condensed into the disciplined lifestyle. Applying an educational ethnographic approach the study operates in the fields of cultural heritage studies and science of education. Research material consists of participant observations made by the researcher in French schools and interviews with French pupils, and their parents, who have chosen to enter the Finnish school system. The French teachers’ work is approached by interviews and by the accounts that the teachers have written explaining their work. The study investigates what has caused some French families, who have come to Rauma, Finland, for work reasons, to make a decision to transfer their French-speaking children from the French school, established by the French employer, to the Finnish school system. As these families become acquainted with the Finnish operating culture, curiosity arises about schools that present different values. When the French school, protecting the identity and the values of the French minority in Rauma, is no longer sufficient for these families, they become disruptors of the heritage community. In the everyday life of the Finnish school the French experience tranquility, the teachers’ positive attitude towards the pupils and the trust between the pupils and the teachers. On the other hand, families are confused by Finnish schools’ freedoms and they would like the Finnish teachers to be more exacting and stricter in many situations.