Europe on the Blackboard

This paper presents an analysis of how French elementary schoolteachers teach Europe today. It shows that the school curriculum does not emphasize the EU as a political community but rather as a collection of countries without specific meaning. The curriculum emphasizes the prevalence of the national framework in the orientations of children while according a new place to a vision of universalism now related to the global. Although teachers themselves demonstrate the same orientation toward the national level in their teaching, this attitude is largely a result of professional routines because significant ideological cleavages exist between them concerning the nation and its importance. Although it is also possible to identify varying attitudes toward the EU, these attitudes come into conflict with the weight of the school curriculum and teaching materials. They also conflict with the essentially blurry notion of the European project in the teachers’ eyes and with the refusal to engage in politics in the classroom. Finally, the combination of these different rationales renders the EU difficult to transpose into a pedagogic project beyond simply presenting it via its constituent countries.