Volunteering, equality, and humanitarianism, are all values which the military have made abundant use of
in recent years when describing modern warfare. This has enabled the army to be present—and sometimes
even invited to exhibit its "products"—in schools and universities today. In fact, the battle the army has
been leading has been focused on an advertising campaign around the concept of citizenship, which
naturally also interests schools as citizenship education was reintroduced in 1985 under the French socialist
government of the day.
Between the ages of 16 and 18, young men and women have to register with the military authorities and
perform what is called a Day's Preparation for the "National Fighting Spirit" (in French JAPD), which
consists of a day spent on promoting military careers. In the national programme for citizenship education,
the section concerning the 16 year old age group includes a chapter entitled "Defence and Peace", which
seeks to define France's new responsibilities in a changing world in which the conception of national
defence must necessarily evolve. However, the concept of citizenship seems to be reduced to the idea of
belonging to a political community and of allegiance to the state.
In fact, now that conscription has been abolished, citizenship education has offered the army a comfortable
and efficient means of recruiting people for the professional army. In the last year of the Lycée, citizenship
education is conceived as a means of making students think about the issues of peace and defence, within
the contemporary context. The situation becomes more and more preoccupying when one considers that the
"Prize for Civic Duty" is jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the Society For the Legion of
Honour, a military award.
On the other hand, one remembers the case of Andrée Pinon, the French school teacher who was banned
from the national education system for having taught her students to sing a song by Boris Vian, entitled The
Deserter on V-day. Following indignation and protest, she was finally reinstated on 13 July 1999, on the
eve of the national day!
Really, one wonders whether the development of a critical form of judgement can emerge from this type of
citizen education. Unfortunately the understanding of political participation is limited to the study of
notions such as power, representation, legitimacy, democracy, the Republic and defence. One is, however,
surprised at not finding other terms such as responsibility, solidarity,
equality, and justice.
The value of the military
The official texts defining citizenship education insist on the duty that each citizen owes the state which is
in turn supposed to guarantee the respect of individual liberty and rights: those duties centring around
voting, tax, defence and solidarity. Moreover, one finds that because of the end of the conscription system,
it has become the schools' responsibility, in a sort of tandem with the army, to implement a critical
reflection on the means of preserving the founding values of civilisation and liberty of the Republic. And
when these same texts mention the duty to defend liberty and people's right to self-determination in the
world, it is the importance of the army in these "humanitarian" interventions and the role and the use of the
armed forces that are underlined.
Notes: 1 The "Marechal Pétain's children" is an expression
referring to the children's leagues which developed
under the laws of Vichy. Children were trained to sing glory to France and to the collaborationists, racists,
and anti-semites of the time. They were enrolled, gathered in work-camps and learnt the new trilogy of
"Work, Family and Nation". Matt Mahlen is an illustrator and artist. He lives in France and
works with Le RIRe magazine.
Translation by Gwen Cressman.
