Gerard Petitjean

See also: Petitjean

Gerard Petitjean is a journalist.

Born on September 4th, 1944 within a family of modest and Parisian origin, Gerard Petitjean passed most of his youth to Nantes. He adopts at the time the political values, rather traditional, of his family circle. From 1962, it follows studies of history to the Faculty of Nantes. While finishing its license, it spends one year to teach the history and the geography as auxiliary teacher in the college of a small town of Loire-Atlantique. It there loses any desire to make career in teaching and then seeks in the journalism of professional new prospects. In 1966, it succeeds in integrating CFJ. It will carry out there a training course at the Minister of education Main road during which it acquires a knowledge of the school questions which will be worth to him to be solicited by Le Figaro while at the same time it is still with the military service (1969). Into its exit of the army in 1970, it thus integrates the daily newspaper to treat with it questions of School and University . But this work does not mean of anything its adhesion with the political line a newspaper whose political orientations rather badly put it at ease. May 68 marked at his place a certain inflection of its political orientations. It started an opening towards the ideas professed by the left. At this point in time he is contacted by Jean Daniel to come to treat school and university questions with the Nouvel Observateur .

Falling under a context of great tensions between the direction and the leaders of the internal dispute of the weekly magazine, its arrival corresponds to a will of professionnaliser and dépolitiser a drafting whose spokesperson (Rene Backmann) is temporarily put at the wall cupboard.

Recovering the heading Education that this last wished to give up, it is established after one month of test within a service company where it binds especially with Claude-François Julien. But as of its arrival, it feels the need for updating its knowledge by many readings in various fields (psychoanalysis, sociology, biology). Thus, beside the topicality of certain sports (tennis, water sport) and of environmental problems or housing, it gives an account of scientific work concerning on subjects which, like heredity ( Of the brains without ancestors , April 11th, 1977) or the exceptionally gifted ones ( Of the large heads like that , May 8th, 1978), are used by the New Line to legitimate its theses hereditarists and élitistes. Teaching, of the nursery school at the University, does not remain about it less its principal field. Marking on these questions a certain affinity with the theses of S.G.E.N. - C.F.D.T and of the teaching current aspiring to put the child at the center of the education system, it does not hesitate to criticize the limits of the official methods, to oppose to them alternative methods like the Freinet method. But it must deal with assistantship teaching as important as sensitive to these positions. Thus, an article of October 1978 in which he criticizes certain dysfunctions and some practical in the elementary school are worth to him abundant letters to the Editor emanating from a campaign orchestrated by the S.N.I. It should be said that it stressed at it the destabilizer role exploited per May 68 an institution having called into question its selective traditional system and meritocratic without substituting another of them. In front of the extent of the reaction and the warning statement of Jean Daniel on the fact that the newspaper could not “put a profession at back”, it is split of an answer ( Lettre with the teachers , November 20th, 1978) in which it explains why the School has, according to him, for mission of making the “children autonomous, free, creative, taking themselves in hand their schooling, relaxed, well in their skin”. The self-management and qualitative aspect of its design of teaching is thus very Net even if it also sometimes happens to him more prosaically to denounce the work conditions of the professors and “French administrative centralism” in the teaching staff management.

As from September 1979, it treats much less School, other subjects (like the social conflicts) attracting its interest. Politically, its “self-management” approach is undoubtedly not foreign upon its engagement within the PS towards 1976/1977. Militant with his wife in the section of Vanves, it supports there the efforts of the current Rocard until, François Mitterrand arriving at the capacity, it does not recognize in the presidential entourage and returns its chart.

Wearied by the extremely repetitive aspect of its field, it ceases treating the question with the beginning of the year 1990. It is Editor association - assistant of the service.

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