How Youth Drive Change (The UNESCO Courier no. 3; July-September 2011)

Considering school history as a place of confrontation of discourse and knowledge from competing socialization spaces (school, family, media), we are interested in citizenship education work and challenges posed by these plural socializations. In an important context media coverage of debates on the recognition of minority memories in France and their entry into the school programs of the college in 2008, how do students appropriate the ""socially vivid issues"" of immigration, colonization, and decolonization? From
content analysis of a corpus made up of around a hundred interviews semi-structured conducted between 2007 and 2010 with 3rd year college students (end of lower secondary and compulsory education), we analyze and highlight contrasting interpretations of these heritages by majority students and minority students, respectively supplied by categories of public debate and family narratives. We show, following work relating to the sociology of school curricula, which learning citizenship in the light of these historical legacies results from the confrontation of the pupils with the discourses and knowledge different spaces in which they take part. But it is above all the product of
their position in the face of these historical legacies, according to their experiences social and the role they give to these stories in building a common identity and belonging.