Scholarisation, apprenticeship and social differentiation. Analysis of the non-industrial craft sector in Morocco

Abstract

The article approaches the question of the schooling processes in the particular environment of the Moroccan craftsmen of Fez. It shows that the weak schooling of the children is bound to the representations and to the ways of transmission of craft industry knowledge. Schooling is, indeed, the object of tensions between a school system of western inspiration and the Muslim system of transmitting patrimonial knowledge. The article shows then that schooling is integrated into craftsmen's ‘relationships with knowledge’ and ‘reasons of knowing’: because of historic development factors of the school system in Morocco, and of sociological factors of domination in the craftsmen's environment, schooling is not indeed legitimate for most craftsmen. It is not even always “possible”: in fact, social reproduction in craftsmen's environment is indeed, and because of the previous factors, based on holding positions bound to the mastery of the traditional knowledge and of the production market, rather than to the possession of school capital. On the other hand, schooling has gained strong legitimacy at a general society level, so that the craftsmen, and especially their children, are more and more the victims of social declassification.