Including the Excluded Poor in Democracy:
Constructing Dialogue Between All Parents and School System  ^*  

Abstract

In a northern working-class region in France, teachers and the school system treated as outcasts troubled parents living in poverty whose children failed in school. They assumed that the parents were disinterested in their children's education, thereby causing them harm. The parents, for their part, saw the school system as just one more institution that excluded their children, depriving them of the chance for a bright future.

This article presents a case in which this classical impasse between the excluded poor and institutions meant for all was once overcome through the prearation of a regional colloquium that led to new regional then national policy about school-parents partnership and teacher training. The articel describes how many different actors among the poorest families, activists on their side, and people from within the institution of the school system, from teachers to policy makers crafted a political space in which a language could emerge beyond violence, guilt and blame for a real democratic dialogue able to overcome the impasse. Some "actionable knowledge" was then extracted from a "reflection on action" conducted in dialogue with all practitioners involved. The lessons drawn give space for enriching the reflection about the role of citizens and institution in democracy, beyond common models of power balance, and illustrate that extreme poverty and exclusion are not inevitable and can be overcome as long as we understand that human dignity and highest values of democracy are at stakes.

Introduction

Twenty years ago Christophe, who was then 11, told us he wanted to be a pediatrician to serve his family and his community. He was living in a temporary housing project in a poor suburb of Paris. Though he was smart and an outstanding chess player he couldn't read and write. Today he washes dishes in the restaurant of a high school to earn a living. Despite his brightness, Christophe was denied the possibility of being fully useful to others.

Fifteen years ago, Norma was living in a run down house in poverty stricken ghetto of Brooklyn, East New York. She participated very regularly in our Street Library program and as many other children she enjoyed books, computers and art activities. One day her little sister made a drawing of a huge black rat saying proudly that there were some like that in their kitchen. Norma made her stop and ripped the drawing apart. She already knew that it was not proper to reveal such a thing. She was teaching her 4 year old sister that some of what she learns in her daily life does not fit with official knowledge and cannot be shared and displayed in front of others. She already knew that there are forbidding gaps between their and others' knowledge, that there are unbridgeable discontinuities in their cognitive universe.

We have known many children like Christophe and Norma in poor neighborhoods of Europe and the USA through our work for the past 15 years with the International Fourth World Movement (IFWM), an international non- governmental organization dedicated to the eradication of extreme poverty since 1957. We have known them directly, through our co-workers's constant efforts of learning about them in our institute of action and research and through the writings of IFWM founder Joseph Wresinski, born himself in extreme poverty. The more we have known them the more we have had to struggle with two questions.

• Are children living in poverty necessarily bound to fail in school?

• These children know things, many things. But is the knowledge they gain through their experience inappropriate to construct their intelligence and impossible to reconcile with official knowledge?

In this article, we tell the story of the making of a regional colloquium, a collaborative effort through which very poor children, parents, activists, teachers and school policy makers successfully tackled these difficult questions often seen as intractable issues in a remarkable way. Their action has had several positive consequences on regional and national school policy in France, and it seems that some lessons can be learned from it, even outside of the French context. Most of all it shook up the overwhelming sense of fatalism concerning school and very poor children, a sense that, unfortunately, prevails well beyond French boundaries. What happened in that colloquium now referred to as the Arras Colloquium?

In that working class region in northern France, like in many other places around th world, teachers and the school system treated as outcasts troubled parents living in poverty whose children failed in school. They assumed these parents were not interested in their children's education, and that their lack of interest caused the children harm and failure in school. The parents, for their part, saw the school system as one more institution that excluded their children, depriving them of a bright future. After the regional colloquium organized by the regional school administration and attended by these poverty-stricken parents, teachers rediscovered the dignity of their mission, and parents recovered hope. The parents started to attend parents' association meetings. Furthermore, as the result of a publication based on the regional colloquium, the Minister of Education convened a national commission to tackle school failure of the poorest children that set new guidelines for a partnership between poor families and the school system. It also created new regional and national training programs to help teachers learn about the lives of the very poor and about ways to develop partnerships with them for the success of school and children.

Before we get to the story as told from two different perspectives -- the points of view of the parents and of the school system -- we briefly describe the French public education context and circumstances under which these events took place. We will explain also the framework within which the encounter between the children, their families, their teachers and school authorities became possible -- the International Fourth World Movement -- and how its permanent workers live in poor neighborhoods, sharing the life of the inhabitants in order to find with them and other partners ways out of poverty and exclusion. We will also contrast current approaches to the education of poor children with the IFWM's action and the philosophy of its founder, Joseph Wresinski. Finally, after having told the story itself, we will try to suggest some lessons that were drawn from it.

Some of these lessons were drawn during a seminar of reflection on action conducted at the Institute for Research, Action and Training in France, part of the International Movement ATD Fourth World, chaired by Pr Jona Rosenfeld, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the JDC Brookdale Institute, Pr Donald Schon from MIT and myself. Twelve different stories of successful reconnections between excluded poor population and public institutions had been collected in such different areas as a trade union, a newspaper, a public utility, a small business, the European Commission, the French Economic and Social Council, and the United Nations... Actors of the different stories and facilitators helped each other to become "reflexive practitioners" and learn, not from theories, but from the actions that actually broke the cycle of exclusion and poverty. The twelve stories and actionable knowledge inferred from them are now published in French, titled "Artisans de Democratie" and to be published soon in "From Impasse to Action," edited by Rosenfeld and Tardieu.

I . A particular approach to poverty and knowledge

1. FRAMING THE ISSUE : school failure, extreme poverty and cognitive continuity.

For years school failure has been an ongoing issue -- a challenge for the students themselves, for their parents, for the teachers. It is also a challenge for our countries as a whole. What is at stake when a portion of a country's population doesn't have basic skills and so doesn't have the mean to live and to insure its future? What is at stake when a portion of the population cannot contribute to the life of the community and to the life of the country? Is not the conception of equality of human beings and democracy itself endangered if some cannot participate in the public conversations that shape our social, political, economical, spiritual, cultural and intellectual lives? From the start, knowledge is an exchange, and if some human beings are not recognized as valuable interlocutors or lack the ability to enter in that exchange, the very social bound is tearing apart. If we accept these premises, then the political question becomes: how can our modern societies make education and learning not just a privilege for some, but truly a right for all?

School systems in such countries as the United States or France proclaim their goal of education for all, with no discrimination. Evidence is that this goal is not fulfilled, even though, in such highly developed countries, the material and intellectual means are largely available. ¹ We will look here at one of the causes of school failures, which seems particularly unfair: children poverty ² . Many authors have described the impact of extreme poverty on school failure in the USA as well as in France. We could just mention the outstanding outcry Jonathan Kozol has made in this country for the last 30 years, first as an inner city school teacher, calling the differences between poor and rich children's chances to learn in school a "savage inequality." Also, in his most recent book, "When Work disappears," William Julius Wilson describes precisely the impact of the senselessness of the new ghetto poverty on the children's ability to learn. He also states that "children of the inner-city ghetto have to contend with public schools plagued by unimaginative curricula, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate plant and facilities, and only a small proportion of teachers who have confidence in their students and expect them to learn." [Wilson, 1996]

We will argue that this mistrust and lack of expectations between school and teachers on one side and children and their milieu on the other is the key issue to be addressed. Very genuinely and intelligently 13 years old Mike told us, " In school they never talk about the social worker who comes to see my parents. They never talk about the little neighbor girl who was put in foster care. They never talk about the police who always come around in the neighborhood. They never talk about all the men who are ill like my father and who cannot work any more. At school , it is like a postcard, everything looks shiny." [Tapori, 1993] As Norma's story about the rats, Mike' remarks lead to one hypothesis: very poor children grow up in discontinuous cognitive environments : each side of their world brings evidence that seems to undermine facts gathered on the other side. Furthermore people in charge of teaching them, their parents first and their teachers later, do not seem to live in any continuity either. They are not partners of a common project: the successful learning of the child. What some say and live enters in contradiction with what the other say and live. Then what to believe? Where are trustworthy facts? What and how to learn?

Quite often parents and teachers blame each other about the failure of the children's learning. Parents' lack of participation and wrong influence are often cited as major causes of child failure in school. Then teachers and parents do not learn from each other and the situation seems to be blocked. The story we will tell will illustrate that fact and describe the deep reframing and transformation that are necessary to overcome this impasse. In other words, in the general issue of poverty and school failure, we propose to focus on the quality of the relationship between very poor parents and school and on how to establish partnership between these parents and the school.

Behind this way of looking at school failure of very poor children there are values and experiences that are those of the Fourth World Movement and of Wresinski, its founder.

2. The Wresinski Approach.

A personal commitment 

My wife Genevieve and I did not start learning about the original approach of Joseph Wresinski in a university, but sitting on the sidewalks of a poor neighborhood near Paris, reading books to children like Christophe. We were spending the summer as trainees of the Fourth World Movement in a transitional housing project, helping in a Street Library. We were both struck by the children. They did not fit the stereotypic image that we had of the poor. We discovered children struggling with many burdens and very difficult conditions of life but also full of joy, bright and eager to learn. I was challenged as a computer researcher, who was at the time building some of the most advanced knowledge and taking part in a process of selection and competition that, at the other end of the chain, was excluding these children. I was not even able to tell the children what was his work about. Genevieve was challenged as a teacher. She had chosen this profession to offer a better opportunity in life to all children. Obviously the children she met made her face a basic question : School was not relevant for those who need it the most. Through this irreplaceable encounter with the children and their families, we gained a strong commitment to them and a will to alter this unbearable situation.

For a few years we continued to exercise our profession while regularly meeting the families. Our personal relationship with them raised more and more questions, and the Fourth World Movement itself became a more and more important place for us to face and discuss these questions. We finally decided to join the full time Fourth World Movement Volunteer Corps, a commitment that led us to the most unexpected places and situations: from transitional housing projects and trailers' camps in France to the poorest neighborhoods of New York, South Bronx, East New York, Coney Island, Lower East Side, living, working and raising our family in the midst of poverty. Then Genevieve worked at the political representation of the poorest within the French Economical and Social Council. I became involved in the training of Fourth World Movement "allies" from all walks of life, as well as in research on their action. Our 350 coworkers in the world were also taking turn between living with and learning from the poor, doing research and carrying their voice wherever it is missing in society. In the process, we soon discovered that the central and crucial ideas that made this experience possible and meaningful were coming from Joseph Wresinski, founder of the Fourth World Movement in the 50's.

When experience is denied. 

The late Joseph Wresinski ³ was born himself in poverty and exclusion. He knew first hand that beyond poverty, there is misery, where people are seen as " infra human beings", suffering a "social death" and denial of human rights ⁴ . For him the central issue of poverty is the exclusion that extends beyond being denied economic resources to being left out of the social, cultural, educational and political life of the nation.

At school Joseph was told not to take the elementary school exam, because teachers were sure that,coming from such a family, he would fail. Pushed by his mother he took it anyway outside of the school and passed. Later he was threatened with being put in an orphanage to be under better influence. Time and again the poorest of the poor are told that their children are not well equipped to learn and they end up believing it. They are also told that their milieu is harmful to their children. It makes them constantly uprooted, denied of their past, doubting of their own experience, knowledge and history. A poor person is, in the words of Albert Camus, the " first man on earth ⁵ ."

Wresinski saw knowledge as key, and sharing knowledge the action to undertake : to enable the very poor to free themselves of their " truncated culture ⁶ " in which their values cannot be lived by learning from others : and to get all the others to acknowledge and learn from the poor's suffering and struggle. As Mr. Dacier, a man who knew the extremes of poverty recently told us, "Lack of education and ignorance is a curse, but it is not the worst. The worst is that people ignores you." The learning has to be reciprocal.

Fourth World, an identity that allows to contribute as full citizens. 

In 1956 in the camp for homeless families of Noisy le Grand where he founded the FWM, Father Joseph Wresinski recognized the experience of his own family and realized "that the families gathered in that camp were not just an accumulation of individual situations, of `social cases' as the administration called them then. The Movement knew right away that they belonged to the same people (...) They had to discover a people where others saw social cases, to see an historic identity whose others denied the social reality. ⁷ "

These reflections led the association and its newly created research institute to select a name, which would show its goal of allowing the poorest of the poor to have their distinct voice heard. They coined the word Fourth World ⁸ referring to the "Cahiers du Quatrieme Ordre" published during the French revolution by Dufourny de Villiers to call attention to these citizens who were so poor that they did not participate in the national consultation and whose contribution had to be specially sought [ Dufourny de Villiers, 1789 ]

Today, throughout the world, thousands of very poor people know that their experience is not just personal but that of a people, and when they talk publicly they know they can do it in the name of the Fourth World. While the activities to share knowledge continue at the grassroots level, the Fourth World Movement works with a consultative status in several national political institutions as well as in international ones, especially in the United Nations system. These organizations recognize that they need to hear the voices of the poorest of the poor to be truly democratic and struggle against extreme poverty and exclusion. The political goal of the Fourth World Movement could be described as trying to reestablish partnership, reciprocal learning and continuity between mainstream society and the very poor and excluded population.

3. Other Approaches To Poverty And Education. Influences And Distinctions.

The approach of the FWM to education has always been influenced and challenged by others. One of the closest is certainly the pedagogy of Maria Montessori. Her methods are well known throughout the world. Less known is the way she developed them. After having worked with retarded children, she literally built her pedagogy in the very poor slums of Rome, starting with the poorest children, learning together with them from their environment. Observing them, interacting with them, taught her how to make up a totally new pedagogy which offered to the children what they needed the most. In their chaotic life they needed a sense of identity, a sense of dignity and responsibility : they built it together in the small community of the class room. Maria Montessori proved that learning from the poorest leads to the best, and her outstanding pedagogy is now spread throughout the world. Unfortunately it is spread mostly among the most privileged groups. The poorest are deprived of what they have contributed to the world. The FWM constantly create a cognitive environment starting with the life of the poor and based on their dignity as Montessori suggested. But they also add that the poorest of the poor are the very source of a creative pedagogy and that to remain creative one has constantly to go back to the source. Many forces would push a group or a method to leave the poor and go to the less poor among them, in a creaming process, finally to end up with the rich. Constantly to remind the priority of the poorest is a key element in Wresinski's vision.

Paulo Freire is one of the masters for showing the fundamental importance of knowledge in the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed people. The conscientization of the poor is basic. The poor people not only suffer from poverty but feel guilty about their situation. Paulo Freire has shown how difficult it is, for oppressed people to gain a new image of themselves and a new image of their oppressors. The FWM has built people's universities which are a gathering of very poor people and other citizens to learn how to express their points of view and learn from each other- a kind of "conscientization", with some very similar techniques . During a meeting between Paulo Freire and some Fourth World full time workers, both sides expressed their mutual respect of each others' approach. However the situation in Europe or Northern America is somewhat different from that in Latin America. Paulo Freire recognized that his constituency was not as poor and crushed as the population we work with in North America or in Europe, even if social support and safety nets are supposed to meet all the needs of the citizens. The poorest in Europe don't have the identity of rural workers, they are excluded from the kind of culture on which one can base a struggle. This implies different means for the struggle than building up the power of the oppressed. Indeed aren't the poorest always losers in strategies which try to establish or balance power between oppressed and oppressors? Are not they asking that we find ways out of the existing rules, the rule of the powerful imposed on the powerless?

A third approach has to be mentioned here. In some poor ghettos, parents and teachers who are very concerned with the school situation are willing to take over the school. Some have done it and run a school themselves . They base their educational system on their aspiration to autonomy. They want their own culture to be respected and fully transmitted to their children without interference in their values. These experiences are certainly valuable on a temporary basis when the school is failing to bring proper multicultural education. Bringing positive identity and self respect to the excluded children is certainly a goal pursued by the FWM. But the poorest of the poor hope to get out of their exclusion which is their ultimate suffering. Finding a separate solution for them is hardly an answer to their question: do I really belong to humanity? We will see in the story how the global institution, because of its universal mission, becomes the best ally of the poorest, and how the poorest, if they dare and are given the means to enter in a dialogue with the institution as a whole become a crucial link that enables the institution to fulfill that universal mission.

4. The Context Of The Story :The French School System
by Claude Pair

A centralized system 

Any educational system faces two issues : insuring quality as well as equity. In this regard , the challenge consists in achieving a common frame but also in meeting the variety of children and young people's needs. In the French educational system centralization prevails. At the end of the 19th. century, this traditional process was considered as the best way of strengthening the Republic and fighting regional particularism. However, in the 1970's, when access to secondary education became more widespread , some sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu came to question the desirability of a uniform system of evaluation. They brought to the fore the social inequalities which were reinforced by this uniformity. Since then, a decentralized approach has begun to make inroads into a system which still remains quite centralized.

The centralized character of the French educational system is particularly evident in primary and secondary education . The Minister of National Education defines very precisely the curricula and the schedule for each topic and for each grade. The teachers are civil servants recruited through competitive entry examination. They are trained in specialized institutes with the same training, the same obligations, and the same status throughout the whole country. The national government remunerates them.

For about ten years, local authorities have had complete responsibility for construction and operation of the school buildings. Nevertheless they don't make any decisions regarding pedagogic matters or teachers. Even the private school system ( 17 % of the school population ) follows the rules defined by the state. The large majority of the private schools have a state contract; in return, the state remunerates the teachers.

The French state devotes 6.3% of its GDP to primary education . This is comparable to the spending of the US State which is 6.9%. ( NB in both cases the figures are from 1996 ) 65% of the finances are provided by the State. 20 % by local authorities, 7% by households, 5% by corporations, and the remaining 2% are funded by various bodies, mainly by the "Caisse d'Allocations Familiales" (Government agency providing family allowances ) .

Elements of decentralization and Priority Educational Zones. 

For the purpose of its educational system, France is divided into 28 territories called "academies" ( including 2 overseas ). Most of the time these coincide with political divisions called the "regions". The national government appoints a civil servant to head each of them. He is the regional head of preprimary, primary and secondary education. He is called "rector". Claude Pair, one of the major actor of the Arras Colloquium story was "rector" at that time, which means head of the region's academy.

However, this centralized organization has been eased in recent years as more responsibilities have been delegated to the schools. They have no voice in the curricula, the schedules or the staff, but they have more freedom of choice regarding pedagogical methods, and all educational matters going beyond the strict transmission of knowledge. This situation allows the school to adjust and to meet the needs of the children, and at the same time avoids too many discrepancies within the school system . The 1989 law on education requires that each school work out a multi year plan , spelling out its policies.

Since 1982 a specific law defining and implementing " Priority educational zones " has been enforced. Its goal is to improve education in areas which are socially deprived. The multi year plan is a basic tool for that purpose.The role of the "rector" consists in convincing and leading the schools to implementing national policies and adapting them to the situation of the " Academy ". To do that he has some means : distributing the teachers among schools and providing continuing education to teachers.

Parents' participation. 

Parents' participation is not easy to define within a system where the state's intervention has a lot of weight and where the teachers picture themselves as holders of knowledge. The issue of parents' participation has been first raised about choosing the students' orientation . How to find the right balance between the power of the institution ( actually the teachers ) and the input of the parents ? The question is even more crucial when the decision has to be made about a student who should either go to professional education or pursue general secondary education ( which leads most of the time to college education ) . This decision occurs at the end of mandatory schooling, when the student reaches 16 years of age.

Since 1969, representatives of parents , as well as representatives of students attend the "Conseil de classe" . During these meetings the level of each student is evaluated and a decision about his/her orientation is made. The representatives of the parents and of the students are also attending the " conseil d'administration des etablissements " and so participate in defining the multi year plan of the school. This gives some power to the parents' associations.

Recent evolution. 

In the 80's the number of students enrolled in the school system rose dramatically. Nowadays , more than 90% of an age group remain in school and study for a longer period of time than the one required by law. The number of drop outs has been divided by three since the 80's. 70% of the students stop their secondary education at the level of "Baccalaureate" ( 34% in 1980), 60% pass the Baccalaureate ( 27% in 1980) and half of the age group starts college education.

One can see in these figures the result of the liberalization of the orientation process coming from the 1989 law. But also and mainly , the overall French population -including all social classes- has shown a much larger interest in educating their children. This growing interest is linked to the higher standards required for employment, within a context of high rate of unemployment. This is also the result of a firm administrative commitment to success for all. The 1989 law stipulates as an objective that all members of an age group reach the minimal professional qualification (C.A.P.)

As the general level of education has risen, equity has also improved. Social inequalities have been limited but they are far from eliminated. At the end of the Sixties, the ratio between the children of executives and the children of workers passing the "Baccalaureate" was 4.6 : in the late eighties this ratio had decreased to 3. One would like to think that the improvement has continued in the 1990's. However nothing insures that this improvement, which has benefited working class families, has also benefited the poorest. About this specific point, no statistics are available. Its seems that, even more than before, the large majority of the drop outs comes from very poor families. Most of them are enrolled in special education ( 4% of all students ) on the pretext of " social handicap " .

"A survey has been conducted in Reims, France- at the beginning of the school year 82-83, among 117 children living in chronic poverty. It has shown that as they enter secondary education, none of these 117 children have followed a normal cursus . Half of the children have already repeated a grade twice, one out of ten has repeated a grade three times, and the others, say four out of ten have already been orientated in Special Education." [ Economic and Social Council Report - Extreme poverty and lack of basic security . 1987]. This survey might be a little old and the figures would possibly be slightly different today, but an equivalent situation would remain. Moreover, since then, the consequences of failure in school have become more important.

About the Nord, Pas de Calais region of France where the story takes place: 

Its population is about 4 million people. Heavy industry , mines, steel mills, textile once employed its inhabitants without requiring high education level. The region has been badly struck by the economic recession since the end of the 70s. Today it is among the most socially deprived regions with the highest unemployment rate and the lowest level of general education.

Figures from 1995. ⁹

In that specific regional context and general sense of intractable failure, the case we will now present seems all the more noticeable.

II. The story of the Arras Colloquium
written by Anne Marie Toussaint, Claude Pair and Bruno Tardieu

How the story was written. 

This story can be told here because of the very precise and consistent daily observation reports that have been written by the actors. The discipline of writing accounts is one that the full time workers of the FWM constantly exercise. It is invaluable to fully understand the life of the poor which at first is very hard to seize. The story recalls a period of 5 years during which many people have been involved . Two of them will tell the story from radically different points of view. Starting from the accounts, the story has been rewritten and double checked by several of the actors involved to assure its accuracy.

Through this story we will walk with Anne Marie Toussaint and Claude Pair down their individual paths, one starting from the bottom and one from the top, both heading toward what seemed an impasse. Each path was shaped by personal convictions, opportunities provided by the Movement, things planned and unplanned, and reflections that transformed each person's views. Starting from opposite ends of the school system, each wove a web, which eventually joined, framing the issue through a public colloquium where future policies could be defined by all.

Claude Pair is a university teacher and respected author on education for the most disadvantaged. He was at the time of the story the head of the Lille regional school system. He had just spent several years in the Ministry of Education drafting part of a new law on education for all. His new responsibility challenged him to test his principles.

Anne Marie Toussaint, an energetic and joyful mother in her thirties and a former school teacher, has been a Fourth World volunteer ¹¹ for the past 15 years. At the time of the colloquium, she and her husband Jean Toussaint, both full time volunteers, lived in one of the poorest housing projects in a depressed region where huge mines had been closed down in recent decades. The Movement, active in the region for 20 years, had built a large network mobilizing people from all walks of life to struggle against exclusion and poverty. Jean Toussaint was in charge of the Fourth World Popular University which gathered the very poor and other people from the region to reflect together. Anne Marie ran the street library program, reading books to the children on the sidewalks of some of the poorest neighborhoods and mobilizing communities and any allies in the region to better the children's future.

The Street Library ¹² is one of the keys in the story. The idea of the Street Library came about when in 1968, Wresinski had conversations with French students who were occupying La Sorbonne and rioting in Paris, stating that university knowledge was oppressive and that the real knowledge was in the streets. He challenged them to apply this idea by going and sharing their knowledge in the mud of the shanty towns' streets around Paris. Many students did and started that movement.

The street is the center of community life in poor neighborhoods, in neighborhoods where nothing is organized for the children once school closes. The street is the only playground, the street library is a resource in the hands of a community. The street library is non threatening, it is a very flexible structure meant to be visible, open and fully in the hands by the community. The setting is the simplest one can imagine. A few people come on a very regular basis at the same spot in a poor community, spread a blanket on the sidewalk and start reading books; they then embark on projects involving arts, science , computers.... The people running the street library can gain the confidence of the people by displaying few basic attitude, the most important being looking for the poorest in the community.

Theirs is the public affirmation that, despite all difficulties, every child wants to learn and enjoys learning and creating, even the poorest ones if they are given priority.

1. Anne Marie and Poor Families Look for Inroads into the School System >

Massive School Failure 

When Anne Marie arrived in Lille, the capital of Northern France, in 1987, she heard the same suffering: "Our children do not learn well in school. And if they don't learn, later they won't have good jobs... We don't want them to have the same life we have had". Or else: "Often our children end up not liking school, they feel rejected because they don't have nice clothes or because they're poor".And children would echo: "Each time someone in school says something about my family, that they're poor or that we live in a no-good neighborhood, I get into a fight. My parents do all they can for us". "I don't like school, because school doesn't like me." Among the 258 children between the ages of six and 16 from the poor families Anne Marie had visited, more than three-quarters had already repeated a grade and half had been put into special education classes for slow learners.

For Anne Marie this was especially distressing, as school had meant so much to her .Her father had gone to work in a mine when he was 13, and her mother had gone to work on the family farm. Her parents had always dreamed that their children would have an education: Anne Marie had become a teacher. After a few years, however, she discovered that some children failed right from the start; these children were usually from the poorest parts of town, and followed in their parents' footsteps. School did not mean advancement and freedom to them.This disturbed her so much that she looked into other ways of reaching out to these children.So she left her profession and became a Fourth World volunteer

School Means Hope to Parents, but Hope is Not Seen 

In the run-down housing project where the Street Library was held every day after school, she saw for herself how parents would try anything, using all their means, to help their children learn. Unable to help them study, as they themselves had often not succeeded in school, they would sometimes spend everything they had to help them. Despite constant failure, the parent kept putting great hope in their children. "After the holidays, Thierry's mother insisted I look at a book and an electronic toy she had bought for him. Thierry is eight. He can't read yet and finds it difficult to recognize his first name. Thierry's mother said: 'It costs a lot and we are already on a tight budget, but I do not want the children to go without... Thierry finds it hard at school... but he's trying. These will be their Christmas presents, which will also help them at school'".

"A few weeks later, Thierry sat with me on the sidewalk, during a Street Library session. He never missed them. Suddenly he took the book and ran to his mother, who was nearby talking with other mothers, and showed her the book with a beaming smile: He had recognized his first name written in large letters."

Yet Anne Marie also had to recognize that the hope and efforts of the poor families were not seen by the school, and that this hurt terribly: "Some time later Thierry's mother showed me his school report card.. The teacher had written: 'Thierry is lazy. He does not make an effort. He needs shaking up'".

At the Street Library, All Children Love Learning 

In the spring of 1988 Anne Marie knew all of the children and families in the projects, even those one is usually advised to stay away from. At first, children feared what she would think of them. As they often do in front of newcomers whom they expect will look for the well-behaved and "good" children, they blamed each other for the broken windows, graffiti and other evils visited upon the community. But Anne Marie had learned it was the participation of those families that were poorest, most excluded and most often accused, that would mean real change and hope for the whole community. She refused to accept the exclusion of anyone. Little by little everyone joined her in her quest to leave no one behind. "Don't forget to fetch so-and-so", they would say; "he can't read; set up the Street Library in front of his house, so they can see what you are doing, and how good it is".

Seeing their children sitting for hours on the neighborhood's sidewalks, reading, painting, inventing stories, getting along, the families expressed a contagious hope: "Our children love to learn. Our children can learn!"

This completely contradicted what they had heard about their children from the school. The parents, who often ended up thinking there was something wrong with their children, started to wonder what was wrong with the school. They also started to challenge Anne Marie in a new way. "Some parents were telling me: 'It's fine for our kids to like reading books and to do wonders with you at the Street Library, but at school they don't learn a thing. We want our children to learn in school'".

"Then parents began to ask me to go with them when they had to see teachers, the school psychologist, the principal. I did. But that was frustrating. Parents were always called on at times of crisis and told what was wrong with their child. They often got aggravated or were simply humiliated. This seemed always to add to the misunderstanding."

Anne Marie thought that what needed to be done was to show teachers that these children were actually able to achieve great things. She came up with the idea of bringing to the school a great exhibition that was then touring Europe, called "I'm Hungry in My Head" ¹³ It featured children's art work, including some made by children of the South Lille Street Library. For children, parents and teachers to see things that had been made right in the neighborhood displayed at the school as part of a high-quality, professional exhibit would be a beneficial shock, Anne Marie thought, and would break the ice.

The principals of the neighborhood's primary schools agreed to hold the exhibit and to organize a special opening with parents. Yet things did not happen the way Anne Marie had hoped.: "The day of the opening two groups stood apart: teachers on one side and parents on the other. I was very disappointed; I felt helpless".

This experience stung Anne Marie. She started to wonder what really was on these teachers' minds. While setting up the exhibit at the school she had had some informal conversations that gave her some clue. Some teachers seemed to really worry and try hard to understand why things had deteriorated so, yet they saw no light. these children and their families were the despair of the school. She realized that these teachers were not so sure of themselves. Maybe they, too, were "hungry in their heads", hungry to know what to do to solve this seemingly insoluble problem. Proving them wrong by showing how good the children could be would not help. It might actually close doors by making the teachers defensive, which was not what she wanted. But then how to join the teachers in their quest? What really were their questions? What did they have to go through? What made them continue to worry about children that many people had given up on?

Understanding the Two Worlds so that They Might Understand Each Other 

Anne Marie could not directly ask these questions of teachers from the school near the housing project. Instead she turned to teachers who had approached the Movement, seeking some volunteer work in their free time. She trained some to help with Street Libraries throughout the region Their questions and revelations gave Anne Marie new insight. She wrote then " For example, Therese, a teacher at a secondary school, helped with a week-long summer festival involving a Street Library in a neighborhood about to be demolished. In an atmosphere of ruin -- with windows and doors that had already been boarded up -- paintings, flower arrangements, and a clay model of a village of happiness had been fashioned by the hands of young and old. Parents were there in force, delighted to lend their skills to bring happiness to their children". ...."Therese came with deep-rooted preconceived ideas. she expected aggressiveness, fear and indifference. Instead she found children resolved to persevere with what they were doing to the end, and parents who really wanted their children to get on. The parents really surprised her."

She had never seen that these children really wanted to succeed, or that their parents really wanted them to. Therese was delighted to have found new reasons for believing in all children and in the dignity of her profession.

Several teachers who had gone through similar experiences through the Fourth World Movement became active allies. They were able to bridge the two worlds by merging their professional skills with the knowledge they had acquired through the Fourth World Movement. Two school teachers, Michel and Catherine, had made it a challenge for their pupils to help each other learn and make sure no one felt excluded in class. They had also met with the families of pupils who were having the hardest time and had gotten to know, for example, that one family was living in a shack with no water or electricity. Together with that family they struggled to obtain more decent housing. The mother of this family, Paulette Vienne, became an active member of the Movement. She also became one of the initiators of a school project designed to reach out to the most isolated parents and include them in the schools' activities.

Within the Movement, an informal 'Education Group' gathered teachers who had come to volunteer in the Street Libraries to share their experiences as teachers and explore how to reach the poorest children in their classes. Anne Marie brought them her questions and experience: "I could share stories of how hard the parents struggled for their children, and teachers could share how hard their school was trying, too. Sometimes we would sharply disagree, but we all felt free and respected enough to tell our real feelings. We were learning to discern the wishes of the parents and those of the school, and to look beyond the apparent opposition. Often a teacher had to let off steam and give vent to his or her discouragement by telling a painful story of failure; They had nowhere else to share it. Then someone else would come up with a different, encouraging way to look at things, and open new ideas for action. I was struck by their passion. Even though they had a lot of work and some seemed quite overwhelmed, they never missed a meeting. Neither did I"

These meetings explored the spheres in which public dialogue could one day be established between parents and schools, it also gave Anne Marie the confidence to believe that she could be understood by schools and that she should dare to speak up when things were unfair. The story of Gregoire gave her the opportunity.

With Gregoire, Refusing the Intolerable 

Gregoire was eight years old. After two years in a slow developers' class, he was slated to be sent to a special school. At the beginning of the 1988 school year, there was no room there and he had to wait. His mother did not know which school he was supposed to attend. Legally he should have gone back to his old school while waiting for a place in the special school, but Gregoire was no longer on the roll at his old school and so stayed home. This lasted for weeks. When Anne Marie and Gregoire's parents questioned the schools, the answer given them was that the parents had not done what was necessary. The parents were blamed.

Anne Marie: "Through Gregoire I discovered that there are certain children whom no one is expecting or waiting for. If they are absent, no one goes looking for them. The school seems to forget them, and no one raises the alarm. This, for me, was intolerable and unacceptable".

Anne Marie wrote to the district inspector. He answered that he wanted to see her. He turned up with the school psychologist and an official from the special education board. The psychologist's first words were: "Whatever happens, there are children that there's nothing you can do for, you can only hope they'll get by; it's no tragedy if they can't read or write, they'll make out -- their parents did". In other words, after shunting the child from one part of the system to another, the system justified its incompetence by claiming the family should meekly accept the situation. Unheard and unrepresented, they cannot respond, and the situation goes unchanged.

In this case however, because of the family's involvement with Anne Marie, the collective refusal of responsibility that was brought to light by Gregoire's case made the district inspector face up to his fundamental responsibility to provide education for all. Gregoire's story showed that this responsibility was not being met. Fortunately, the inspector did not go along with the psychologist's opinion. He did what was necessary to get Gregoire enrolled again. Furthermore, he asked Anne Marie if he could call on her to prevent such situations in the future and to help ease relations between the counseling board and some of the most underprivileged parents.

This was a major step. It showed Anne Marie that dealing with the situations of the poorest families required entering a dialogue with the school system at all levels, including the highest ones. It was the beginning of an ongoing partnership -- as yet with no formal shape.

Parents Begin to Organize and Speak Up for One Another 

In the neighborhood, stories such as Gregoire's did not go unnoticed. Parents were beginning to realize that their children could find their way within the school system. Anne Marie started to notice signs of mobilization: "In autumn 1989 I saw four families pool their back-to-school allowances so that all their children would have enough to get to school right through to the end of the month. I saw one mother who had herself been having difficulty sending her child to school regularly do her level best to help another mother get her children to school on time every day. Other parents tried to do more in the way of understanding what school career they were being offered for their child -- they often had the impression of being cornered into accepting places they did not agree. Increasingly they refused to accept this as inevitable. I think for example of Sandrine and Francoise's story. When they moved into our housing project, they had already a long history of poverty.

For five years after Françoise was born, the family moved from one makeshift home to another, so she was constantly changing schools. After two years in nursery school, the guidance committee said she needed to go to a special school; yet when the next school year began there was no place for her. She returned to her old school and her mother, who went to see the teacher on the first day, came back wreathed in smiles: "I think it will be O.K.". In actual fact during that first term Françoise began to read and seemed happier at school. But poverty hit the family again. Winter came with higher bills, the father could not find any work, things got worse and the threat returned of having Françoise and her sister Sandrine taken to foster care, as their two older brothers had been years ago. Françoise was very scared, stopped making an effort at school and got rebuked for her bad behavior. Everyone complained about her; she even went so far as to play truant. The parents were held responsible and were told they did not know how to bring up their children. When, for administrative reasons, the family allowances were held up for nearly two months, the mother kept the two girls at home. "I don't want them going to school with nothing in their stomachs. What would people say about us again?" She was blamed for not sending her children to school. Relations with the school got worse and dialogue became impossible. But the parents did not give up.

Anne Marie: "For the next school year, seeing nothing else to do and squeezing the money from their meager income, they enrolled their daughter at a local parochial school. Before the term began the mother went to see the principal who asked her: 'what do you want for your child?', no strange question really but, for the mother, a bombshell. 'You see?' she told me, 'she actually asked me what I wanted for Françoise. I've never been asked that before. They like children in that school. I think things are going to be all right'".

"Over the months that followed I saw the mother going regularly to school for news and to ask how she could help her daughter get on. It was still difficult for Françoise actually to like school, but she made progress and came home encouraged."

"When it was a matter of choosing a school for Sandrine, Françoise's younger sister, who had also fallen behind when they were constantly on the move, they had the courage to ask to participate in the meeting of the commission that would decide on Sandrine's school career. This was allowed. The mother was very proud when she came out of that meeting: 'I talked about Sandrine but also about the other children in the district. I said no one had a right to say to parents -- 'you have to do this or that, it's urgent' -- and then make the children wait two years for what they were told was the right kind of place. I spoke up for all the children -- the Fourth World can be proud!'"

After three years of effort, Anne Marie learned that partnership between a school and the parents of left-out children was possible, and that it did help the children to succeed. But these were only a few isolated cases, and Anne Marie could not see how she could invest as much energy for every single poor family in the region. The whole school system had to be changed. But it was a mammoth institution, and the allies of the Fourth World felt small, by comparison. It felt as if it would take a miracle.

2. Claude Pair: Confronting Reality and Principles to Achieve an Education for All

School with a Capital "S" 

Claude Pair had always been a good student. He liked school and school liked him. Behind the forbidding glasses of a 60-year-old high-ranking official, one could see in his bright eyes the curiosity of someone with a child-like passion for solving difficult riddles. Knowledge had become his profession. For most of his life he had taught in the best universities and done research in the most current disciplines, particularly computer science.

As a child, Claude had watched his mother, a small town school teacher, pay great attention to all her pupils. He learned from her that school deserved a capital 'S' when it was true to its vocation -- namely to ensure all children an equal opportunity to learn and succeed. Knowledge was to be shared. There was no reason for it to be a privilege.

Called by the Minister of Education 

These principles led Claude to take up the challenge of introducing computers into schools. Were computers to provide a new way of learning for all children, or to be a privilege for the few? As the result of a study mission on this subject, his skills and ethical positions came to the attention of Alain Savary, the newly-appointed Minister of National Education. Savary asked him to leave his native Nancy to become responsible for all the secondary schools of France.

Claude related: " This was in 1981, ¹⁴ a year bubbling over with new ideas. The feeling was that everything was possible in the field of social justice, and that, for the moment at least, the notion that everything was in a log-jam was no longer true. Alain Savary created the Priority Education Zone to increase human resources in culturally deprived areas. I led a drive on vocational schools that explicitly undertook to 'make a significant contribution to the fight against cultural and social inequalities and against unemployment among the young'."

Some Young People are Not Seen by the National Administration 

It was at this time that Claude Pair had his first official contact with the Fourth World Movement. He had already heard about it from his wife who was distributing books from the Fourth World Movement and from his daughter, who was helping at a Street Library in Nancy. "Nice activity", he thought, no more.

"One Sunday morning in 1984, I stood in for the Minister of Education, Alain Savary, at a meeting of young people in the Fourth World Movement run by Father Joseph Wresinski. The thing that struck me was that whereas everyone I met through my job said that the vocational schools had a very poor reputation, and the diploma they granted -- the CAP ¹⁵ -- had little value, these Fourth World youngsters were clamoring to get into these schools and dreaming of that diploma. I realized that the Fourth World could tell us previously unheard stories and give us a fresh outlook unlike that in government circles."

Alain Savary was replaced by another Minister of Education, leading to changes in policy that caused disagreement between Claude Pair and his superiors, which led to his resignation. Back at the university in Nancy, he recorded his thoughts about what he saw as the real challenges confronting education in a book entitled Rue du Bac . He re-targeted his computer science research to focus on what could be done to overcome educational difficulties.

From Drafting to Implementing a New Orientation Act on Education for All 

Claude Pair was called back to Paris by a new Minister of National Education as a senior official with the Secretary of State for Vocational Education. Claude: "More than ever, my aim was to help all young people succeed; my contribution to the writing of the new Orientation Act ¹⁶ on Education was made with that in mind. I think I helped have the following two passages included in the Act: 'The acquisition of a general education and a recognized qualification shall be ensured for all young people regardless of their social, cultural or geographical origin...' and 'The Nation shall make its goal that of bringing, within ten years, all the members of a given age group to at least the level of the CAP (Certificate of Professional Aptitude)'."

After the Act was ratified, Claude asked to head one of France's regional education authorities so that he could be in the field and try out his ideas. He opted for the Lille Region in the north of France, because he knew how real the economic crisis there had become. He also knew of the creative efforts in the region to surmount the difficulties.

Back in the field, Claude found his principles challenged. New questions arose His first contacts there reminded him of the bare reality: " Three white-collar children out of four pass the baccalaureate (the diploma required to enter university) compared to one out of four blue-collar children -- to say nothing of the people in extreme poverty. And this in spite of all the claims about equal opportunity."

"I also saw that the desire to improve equality of opportunity and fight educational failure was widely shared. No one wanted children to fail. Yet the causes of failure were being told in a new way for me. When the question of poor performance came up while going round the schools, teachers invariably told me: 'It's the parents whose children would need most that we talk to them who never show up.' So the school blamed the failure on the parents and accused them of failing to back up the school, or of not even being interested in how their children were doing."

"This rang a bell. My own experience with what I had learned from the Fourth World Movement came in. I knew that very poor parents did have ambitions for their children to succeed at school. But I was not in a position to assert this; I presented it in a different way: 'You can't just see the parents as your assistants and claim they have no interest in school. You must treat them as independent players in the educational process'."

A "Regional Educational Project" to Mobilize All Partners 

After several months of such field visits and broad consultation, Claude Pair and his administration brought out a "Regional Education Project". The first of the strategies in the project, entitled "Bringing the Educational Community to Life" to borrow a phrase from the new Act for Education, included "a search conducted by all competent bodies for methods to make the families of all school children, the poorest in particular, partners with schools, and the organization of a colloquium on the subject".

He comments on these words: "'The families of all school children, the poorest in particular.' I wanted to make sure that the poorest would not be forgotten, but neither did I want a cordon drawn around their problem, which would have shut them up in another ghetto. The challenge was to have them contribute their knowledge to the benefit of all".

"'All competent bodies.' Through this administrative formula I was hoping to open the dialogue to others besides the parents' associations. Indeed, the issue of lack of partnership with very poor parents could be seen by parents' associations as being their responsibility and no one else's. Yet they did not seem to really be in touch with poor parents. I felt that other representatives of poor parents, such as the Fourth World Movement, had to be consulted. This had yet to be accepted by the usual partners -- teachers, parents' associations, administration."

Claude insisted that he had to be independent of any private institution or association, including the Fourth World Movement. "In fact, I was not going to apply specific ideas or opinions; it was more a matter of the knowledge that this particular association gave me which was lacking in my administration and proved useful in my public service job."

At the press conference held to present his new Regional Education Project, Pair did use his knowledge of what the poorest families had to endure: "Paralyzed by their memories of failure, and even by their hopes of success for their children, some fathers and mothers do not know how to cope with school and their children. Cramped housing where it is impossible to work, read, or sleep, the preoccupation of both parents and children with the problem of survival, the threat of possible separation and the routine of life are all obstacles beyond many teachers' ken. The only way for the materially and culturally poorest amongst us to make any headway is through action that brings families into the circuit and treats them as partners".

At this point, the idea of a colloquium about partnership with the educational community -- school staff, children and parents' representatives -- was launched. But what would be its central theme, and who would be given a chance to talk? No one really knew.

Choosing the Architect: Let Him See for Himself 

Claude Pair felt he had gone far by himself and now had to delegate. He recalls: "I could have done all the work myself and might have liked to, but now that time has passed I realize why I chose not to. I found another person, Jacques Simon, a former headmaster and member of my administration. He was open and accessible, but not obsessed from the start with the same conviction as I was that the poorest families should be made partners with the school. "

Claude asked Jacques Simon to set up working groups to discuss different possible partnerships in the educational community and prepare the colloquium. After the first meeting, Jacques Simon was disappointed: He felt he had heard nothing new. Parents' associations had expressed their agenda many times before, and the others did not say much about parents in poverty either. Claude Pair suggested he could call on other organizations of parents based in poor neighborhoods, such as the Confederation of the Family Unions ( gathering many working class families ) and the Fourth World Movement. But Claude did not know where he could go from there.

3. Official Regional Committee Gathers Points of View

Good News: "The Regional Head of Education Asks for Our Experience!" 

In December 1990, Anne Marie received a phone call from Jacques Simon. Years later, she would remember the unexpected and exciting words: "We want to provide the parents farthest away from school with the opportunity to have their voices heard and to give their point of view. We know they can't come themselves, so we want you to come to a meeting of a Regional Committee on parents as partners".

Anne Marie was impressed and happy: "I immediately went to see the families in the neighborhood and told them: There are people in the Regional School Authority who want things to change for the children with greatest difficulty. They want to know what we think and expect from school for our kids.' I had brought with me extracts from the new Education Act and the Regional Project to share with them to show that this was a deliberate policy."

"For some that piece of news was too foreign. Others, like Françoise and Sandrine's parents, had recently had some positive dialogue with school; they believed me and eventually convinced others. Little by little each family conveyed to me the thoughts, experiences, and suggestions they wanted me to pass on to the regional Committee."

When Anne Marie went to the Committee meeting at the impressive Regional School Authority building, she was tense. Had she been right to raise all these hopes within the families? Would the other people at the meeting understand? Would they even care? Would she have time to speak? Jacques Simon's opening words surprised her: "Today we want to hear the views of the poorest families -- the ones we never hear -- to explore whether they expect anything from school and if so, what". Indeed the idea of Pair had been adopted by Simon. She then shared the exact words she had collected from the families about the hopes they placed in school. That made quite an impression on the members of the Regional Committee. Anne Marie was invited to come back to the meetings, and became a permanent member of the Committee.

An Issue Comes Up: Why the Most Disadvantaged? 

Anne Marie's well-documented, precise, and forceful contributions to the Regional Committee elicited some reactions. One question seemed to recur: Why listen more closely to the most disadvantaged? The parents associations' representatives were especially affected. "What about the other parents?" Anne Marie: "Here I have to say it was Jacques Simon who imposed the principle of taking children in the worst difficulty and their parents as the point of reference. He simply exerted his authority, coming from Claude Pair, who had the highest authority. Without this alliance with authority I would not have lasted long".

"At the end of the first meeting, Jacques Simon asked me to stay behind a moment. He told me about his childhood. The son of a miner, he owed his advancement to his education. He also told me about the difficulties he had in the school he headed with some socially excluded youngsters and their parents. This touched me."

"Nevertheless, I realized that we had to offer him personal experience, proving that working together with families in poverty was not just a wishful idea but was feasible, and could really benefit preparation of the colloquium. That's when we got the idea to invite him to a Fourth World People's University session."

Face to Face: Jacques Simon and Fourth World Families Meet 

That year, Fourth World People's Universities ¹⁷ (where very poor people and other people discuss and learn from each other), throughout France were studying legislation to fight poverty, and how to enforce and improve it. A study of the new Act on Education was on the agenda. As for other legislation studied, Jean Toussaint (Anne Marie's husband), in charge of the regional Fourth World People's University, wanted to invite a qualified person. Jacques Simon would be the one. Jacques Simon had already heard of the Fourth World People's University because its monthly regional sessions were held in the auditorium of the Regional School Authority. For him, attending a Fourth World People's University in the building where he worked was certainly easier than going to some strange and unknown place, where he might have felt uncomfortable or threatened. He soon sent his acceptance, not as representative of his institution, but as a private individual.

As usual, Fourth World University members, many of them living in extreme poverty, from throughout the region had prepared for the session in their local sections. The room was packed that night, the air thick with the consciousness of what was at stake. Would people listen to each other? Or would the harshness of life and humiliation on one side, the uneasiness and temptation to self-justification on the other, make it a dialogue of the deaf?

Mr. Simon ended the three-hour meeting with words that remain engraved in every mind. Anne Marie repeated them, years later: "You have to go on reminding school of what it is, and why and how it has to operate if it is to constitute a real opportunity for all children".

"You tell me: Being unhappy and penniless doesn't mean we don't love our children or have ambitions for them. That is something we have to drive home. Clearly children will do better in school the less they feel despised on account of their families."

"We have to look together for ways to convey these messages; for ways to get all parents, including those who don't yet dare to do so, to speak their minds and help school to flourish. We are going to organize a colloquium on this in 1992. You, families of the Fourth World, have something very important to say to the education system and to all citizens. This colloquium can be the opportunity for them to listen to you. Out of your experience we shall fashion tools to make school perform its real mission: to teach all children whilst respecting their differences."

Obviously, by listening to the very poor families' account of their experience with school, Mr. Simon, with considerable surprise, had discovered certain truths and had had the honesty to say so. He was moved. So were the families. Anne Marie recalls: "At the close of the session, Paulette Vienne who had come with Michel and Catherine Thoris, came to me and expressed the general feeling: 'He really listened! He heard us! If we are to work with people like him, things are going to move.' That evening people acquired the inner conviction that their thoughts were needed. This later resulted in many families contributing or coming to the colloquium."

That evening Jacques Simon moved from a general idea that came from his superior, Claude Pair, to an inner conviction based on personal experience: Dialogue with the poorest families was possible and necessary. A promise now had to be kept: A colloquium was to take place and the most disadvantaged parents would have a right to speak. The question then was, who would listen and enter into a dialogue with them?

Each in His Own Way, Members of the Regional Committee Contribute 

If Jacques Simon was now convinced, the other members of the working groups were not. The meetings were still difficult, rather theoretical and stiff. The teachers, principals, parents' representatives and other professionals seemed to stay with their positions, saying what they had always said. They would not address the question of the poorest parents.

More confident, Anne Marie changed her strategy. She started quoting the examples, questions, and reflections she was hearing from teachers in the Fourth World Education Group. She showed that she knew and respected both sides of the story. The words of the teachers in the Fourth World Education Group that she quoted had a credibility and an honesty that touched the members of the Regional Committee. One by one they opened up to the difficult and unsettling questions that absence of very poor parents posed, and they brought the real issues to the table. Jean Paul Candelier, head of a secondary school in a country area was the first one.

Anne Marie: " Returning to his school after each meeting Jean Paul would question people around him : `Who are the children in greatest difficulty? Do we know their parents? How do we get them to speak out too?' He explained to the Regional Committee what they discovered : the least known parents were also, for the most part, those for whom life was most difficult, and whose children failed. Then he and his team arranged to go and see them in the small villages in which they lived. They asked me to come and meet them too, to understand more clearly how they lived and what school represented for them. Then we shared this in the Regional Committee. That was a turning point".

Then a second member of the Regional Committee, a school social worker, made another major contribution. She told stories of how some children and parents were marginalized at school. Difficult cases, handed over to her, the specialist, could be ignored by the rest of the community, feeding into the process of exclusion. On the contrary, when she had been able to help recreate dialogue between excluded parents and teachers, things really could improve for a child. A whole class could even benefit from renewed cohesion, a condition for efficient learning.

A third member of the Regional Committee, representing a local parents' association, also had a decisive impact. While representatives of the large parents' associations kept some distance throughout the whole process, she got very involved. At first she was clearly upset by what she heard at the meetings. Wasn't it the parents' associations' responsibility to represent all parents in the necessary dialogue between school and families? Instead of feeling attacked, becoming defensive and rejecting responsibility for these parents who never came to meetings, she started to reveal her own difficulties in getting her association to reach out to the poorest families. Anne Marie wrote then " Clearly she had understood the damage that the lack of respect could wreak on those families. Obviously she and her association valued that unconditional respect. She felt that the members of Regional Committee would also respect her; this might have helped her to be so honest and acknowledge that crucial point about parents' associations not really reaching out to represent all parents."

As the meetings came and went, links of trust were forged in the Regional Committee. An atmosphere of freedom and sincerity allowed everyone to dare to recognize the real shortcomings of the school system toward the most deprived parents. By now, the idea of having these parents contribute to the colloquium became increasingly accepted.

But for Anne Marie this was not enough: "We could not stop at accounts of suffering and expectations. I knew that poor parents and the school system could work successfully together. Parents wanted to contribute successful experiences, not just to complain. But it was not clear to the members of the Regional Committee that cases of success with the most disadvantaged existed outside my own experience, which was -- in their eyes -- not easy to apply more generally".

This was a real trap for Anne Marie. If only Movement members could succeed, how could the school as a whole get involved? Somewhere in the region, there had to be some teachers who, independently of the Movement, were succeeding in involving very poor families. How to discover them?

Looking for Other Ways to Show that Partnership is Possible 

This meeting happened not exactly by chance. Anne Marie meet Giuseppe Quinto and five of his students on his way to Human Rights Plaza in Paris on October 17, 1990 , for the annual rally on World day to overcome extreme poverty. During the trip he told Anne Marie that studying the human rights in school and teaching respect for each other's background was one key to making school a place where everyone could learn. He learned that by experience since he has been a child in a family of poor Italian immigrants.

What struck him and his students most at the rally was a large, colorful tapestry with the names of thousands of children from around the world, poor and rich, embroidered on it in support of the message that extreme poverty is a violation of human rights. ¹⁸

Back at their school, Giuseppe Quinto's students told this story to the whole school. They wrote to the Movement in order to get involved and soon received a "Tapori Suitcase" ¹⁹ created by children living on the street in Africa with the help of Fourth World volunteers. They displayed it in the middle of the school hall, where it captivated all of the children. This was the beginning of a long and beautiful Tapori ²⁰ story. Giuseppe Quinto said "In Tapori, the children found an echo of the hopes they already had. They found that other children, too, yearned for all to have human rights. But it took us farther than we thought. The children began to talk to us about what some of the other children in the district were going through. No longer could we as a school ignore the difficulties certain families were having; this meant we had to find new answers".

This gave Giuseppe Quinto new energy for getting the poorest parents involved. He would stand at the school gate to talk with them before and after school; he went to see them at home to get their opinion on school issues; he made sure to ask even the poorest parents for their help in setting up a library or arranging a parents' room in the school. Bit by bit, all parents began to feel they had a part to play in the school, as evidenced by the 80% turn-out at the parents' council elections -- in which some very poor parents were elected.

Anne Marie invited him to the Regional Committee . He felt it was a recognition of his years of effort to prevent schools from giving up hope for such children. He convinced everyone that partnership with all parents was possible, and showed how it could improve the climate of a school: When the poorest children see their parents becoming involved in their school, they feel respected. No one bullies them anymore. There are fewer fights and less tension. Children can be at peace and concentrate on learning.

Quinto's intervention convinced the Regional Committee to look for similar experiences throughout the region. It also decided on the final format of the colloquium -- to devote half the time to setting forth the hopes of the families, and the other half to accounts of successful experiments in partnership with all families.

4. A Colloquium with All Parents, and Its Consequences

Final Preparation 

The weeks leading up to the colloquium were ones of intense effort to involve those farthest away from school and those who strove, sometimes in great isolation, to make school work for all. Paulette Vienne and Michel and Catherine Thoris persuaded the principal of their school to present their anti-exclusion school project. In another city, a special education teacher, together with a pupil's illiterate mother, prepared a presentation about what collaboration with parents involved and generated for children. A pediatrician interviewed all the parents in a very poor housing project who visited his clinic. Although none of these parents finally attended the colloquium, trapped as they were in a too-chaotic life, he spoke in their name. Mothers on a workfare program came with representatives of a rural family association and a social worker to explain what they had undertaken to help their children succeed in school. An Urban Social Development official, together with the head of a school district, came to speak about their experience of meeting with parents from the poorest area before school starts. Many more such things happened all over the region.

For her part, on the eve of the colloquium Anne Marie prepared a last meeting of about 80 very poor people from all over the region. They had to decide which of them would speak on behalf of the others and what they would say. She recalls: "Once again we heard some very distressing, unacceptable things: the mother whose children had to walk down country tracks to get to school and were laughed at because of their muddy feet. Or the 13-year-old who was made to wash every day when he got to school because he smelled and so was late for lessons, humiliated. There is no point in repeating them all here in this story, just as there would have been no point in relating them all in that form at the colloquium".

"We had to find the strength to tell these intolerable things while preserving our respect for all those who were trying to make school a place of progress and advancement for all children. We had to control our emotions and remind ourselves that this suffering was no more the school's fault than that of a society which accepted this exclusion, which no longer saw prospects for all its children, but loaded them with guilt and shame for themselves and their parents, telling them: You would have been better off if you did not exist."

"The group chose three spokespersons. In spite of their pain and humiliation, they spoke nobly and in a constructive, calm manner, showing respect for the effort of the schools. Once again it was the poor, who are so often accused of all ills, who were the first to show that paths to reconciliation and partnership do exist."

The April 4, 1992 Colloquium: "All Families are Partners with School" 

Claude Pair relates this intense moment, which he so anxiously anticipated: "The colloquium was held in Arras -- 330 people in a fine amphitheater at the newly built university. The first thing to strike you was the number of people. We really had pulled in the crowds. Of course there were many speakers, but what was clear at the end of the day was that the statements that had the greatest impact came from Fourth World families. As Elizabeth Charlon, general chairperson and professor of sociology, said in her conclusion, 'Like every one of you, I am moved by the sincerity of the suffering, the expectations and the hopes dashed or increased tenfold'".

"It was from that point that the Arras Colloquium became a national point of reference: Families in extreme poverty had had the opportunity to speak, and had done so with force and intelligence. Others spoke, too, proving that collaboration was possible, useful and necessary. This was the first time very poor families and the world of education had met and engaged in public dialogue, and on a subject so painful. They did so in depth, and in an atmosphere of truth. In his closing address, Jacques Simon said something which many felt to represent a radical change: 'I shall never again let it be said that the parents of disadvantaged children have no interest in seeing their children perform well in school'."

"Another startling happening was Mr. Quinto's daring to say publicly that he had tried, experimented and even succeeded in many ways, but that he was giving it all up because he did not feel he had the necessary backing of his superiors and the regional education authority. His regional inspector came to see him during the conference. I don't know what was said but they talked and he left encouraged."

"What sums it all up for me is the flooding of the switchboard at the authority's office in the days that followed, with calls from teachers who had been deeply affected, saying they had found renewed faith and dignity in teaching."

"So rather than a culmination, the colloquium was the start of a vast drive toward action of many kinds, especially teacher training, that would break the sense of intractable impasse and futility, create a sense that everyone wanted the same thing -- namely, success for both children and school, and a map of concrete paths of action."

When school re-opened the following year, many Fourth World families spoke of their hope that perhaps, after all that had happened, their children would do better in school. More and more parents dared to put themselves forward as parent representatives. Others attended a school workshop to learn how to read to children; co-operative initiatives of all kinds flourished. Teachers and school staff were also affected as a result of widely distributed publications about the colloquium.

Some of the spin-off was very concrete. A fund was designed to support innovative activities that encouraged partnership with families, particularly those suffering the most. Claude Pair asked the Regional Committee to be the permanent body responsible for promoting and supporting these activities. As a first step, it organized a new training module at the regional university school of education called, "How to Succeed with All Pupils and with their Families". The instructors -- teachers, and representatives of very poor families -- attempted to give future teachers insight into the lives of the most disadvantaged families, and to teach them to use the families' experiences as a model for making cooperation work. The experiment was copied in other regions, and a training module is now in place for instructors from the whole country.

In autumn 1993, after a change in the government, a new director was appointed to the Lille Regional Education Authority. Several press reports said that Claude Pair lost his job because of his commitment toward the most disadvantaged families. He returned to his university in Nancy, where he helped set up a training module for teachers. He continues to participate in national and European dialogue about education as a way to fight extreme poverty, and often does it on behalf of the Fourth World Movement.

In Lille, the new regional director confirmed the existence of the permanent body, "Parents as Partners", still headed by Jacques Simon. Support continues for schools wanting to experiment with partnership with disadvantaged families, as well as for teacher training schemes. Also, at the request of his staff, the new director urged the schools in his region to attend the October 17, 1993 World Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty. This was reported to the Ministry of Education which asked region heads throughout the country to let children celebrate that day in school to learn about the struggle against extreme poverty and for human rights, and to express their solidarity.

Last and most important, the colloquium supplied much of the material for a national report entitled Extreme Poverty and Educational Success: Changing Perception , written by Philippe Joutard. This report was drafted by a National Committee set up by the Minister of Education and including Anne Marie Toussaint, Monique Pair, and Jean Paul Candelier. The report has shaped new national policies and a new national training for teachers, to help the poorest children succeed in school, citing the necessity of partnership with their parents.

III. Learning from the practitioners how to reestablish continuity.

We presented the hypothesis in our first chapter that children from very poor and excluded background live in a split cognitive universe. Knowledge acquired in one part of their universe is irrelevant in the other part and vice versa. Each time they construct a model of the world in their mind according to evidence gathered on one side, evidence from the other side comes to undermine that construction. We suggested that this is one of the key reasons why the children cannot engage successfully in knowledge construction (knowledge being not a thing to acquire but a construction of the mind and senses). This is one of the key reason for children not being able to make sense out of things and trust their own minds.

We then went a step further suggesting that the cognitive universe of children is inhabited by people: people who act, live, think in front of them, people with whom they enter in conversation, people who carry consciously or not some responsibility in the education of a child. Part of the discontinuity in the child's cognitive universe appears as a discontinuity between the people populating this universe : his or her parents and his or her teachers. If parents and teachers mistrust each other to the point of saying that the others' words, attitudes, actions do not make sense,  then the child doesn't know what to believe, where to learn.

This hypothesis inferred from observation of many very poor children seems to be confirmed by the teachers and the school hierarchy in our story. They too mentioned parents' non involvement in the school as a key reason for the children's failure in school. Parents, by trying to go to the schools and meet the teachers to improve the situation, show that they too believed a relationship between them and the school would help. But neither side knows how to make that faulty relationship work. The story however gives some examples of actions that, according to the practitioners themselves, from both side of the issue, have helped overcome the impasse. Without trying to construct here a complete theory of action, we will try here to mention some types of actions and "know-how-to-be" that seem useful to achieve the goal of establishing a partnership between poor parents and the school .

1 . To reveal the suffering and aspirations of the very poor.

The first crucial action in the story concerns parents' aspirations. In the beginning of the story, according to the school system and to a general feeling, these parents have no aspirations for their children. In fact, this lack of aspiration is the basis of a theory used by the institution to explain its failure: the parents do not care, and this is why the children do not care and do not succeed. That theory is pretty powerful and very poor parents by themselves have very little means to contradict it. They even sometimes seem to internalize another version of it which is: my children are really unable to learn and there is nothing we can do about it. Another devastating model of parents' attitude is to affirm that their behavior does not make sense: one day they care, the next they don't. How often parents go to school to be lectured by teachers who prove to them, with all their rhetorical skill that what they, the parents, are doing just does not make any sense. Here too parents end up believing this, at least superficially, totally overwhelmed by the chaos of their lives in extreme poverty. Does extreme poverty make sense? As we were working on this article and reflecting on it with various people, a mother from the South Bronx kept repeating to us one thing: "this is so crazy, this drives me crazy, I can't think any more."

The first answer to this situation that the story illustrates is the commitment of people like Anne Marie, who put their life on the line and say to very poor families: we too think that extreme poverty does not make sense, we try to free ourselves from any other constraints or agendas, than trying to make sense of your struggle against extreme poverty and join it as our common struggle for human dignity. From the very beginning of the story parents tell Anne Marie that they suffer from their children's failure. They might blame themselves or their own children from it, but they surely suffer. That suffering is revealed because of Anne Marie's identity as a "poverty fighter," who does not sit in judgment of the parents. It is also carefully chronicled by Anne Marie who, by doing her daily observation report, for months and years, helps reconstruct the meaning and sense of what the parents share with her. That suffering is a proof that they care and is what is officially denied by the institution who pretends parents do not care about their children's education. The institution has some ground to deny that they suffer since the parents do not even have the words to express it, having no one with whom to have a conversation about it.But Anne Marie's account brings obvious proof that parents do not accept the situation, that they do care, without knowing how to fix the situation. Their suffering, once revealed, at first privately then more and more publicly, is the engine that will open up the impasse.

The next answer is the collective action of the Street Library , a public affirmation that the community cares about its children learning and being creative: the children care, the parents care, the whole community gets involved. That little space of freedom created in the midst of the tension and chaos of a ghetto allows private suffering to be turned into a public aspiration. Seeing their children enjoy learning sends a strong message to the parents: our children are not unable to learn, something must be wrong with the school, not only with our children. This public aspiration and enthusiasm to learn is also what surprises Therese, a teacher, who had such children in her classroom, but had no clue about their milieu's values. It is also what puts in question what she has believed so far: if these people want their children to learn, if these children want to learn too, then there must be something to change in the school. The Street Library starts a new conversation between children, parents and volunteers in which they create a language together, finding words that express suffering and aspiration as never before. This language is what doesn't exist between excluded poor and democratic institutions. Crafting it through reciprocal human engagement is what really overcome the impasse, establish democracy in areas of society where it just doesn't reach, reinforcing it for all.

2. To recognize the suffering and aspiration of the teachers and of the school

A turning point in the story is when Anne Marie understands that the Street Library and all her successes with the children and their families could be seen by the teachers as proving them wrong and actually shut out any chances of dialogue with them. From her stand point it would have been easy to interpret the situation as follows: the teachers actually do not care about the poorest children, they have given up on them, they just blame the parents to give themselves a good reason not to bother any more. Much evidence could support that theory. Yet Anne Marie has to recognize how the teachers feel when the subject of some of the poorest children comes up in conversation. She realizes that the teachers too suffer from the failures that, inspite of what they say in public, they do see also as a personal failure on their part. Theories are there to cover up their shame. It means that their aspirations for these children are not dead, on the contrary. But proving them wrong would just reinforce their defensive attitude, and the impasse.

In the same way that the Street Library is a space for freedom at the heart of the ghetto, where aspiration to change can be expressed, the informal "Education Group" started within the Fourth World Movement is also a place where teachers can freely express their suffering, and therefore their aspirations. Obviously the school system itself was not offering these practitioners any such space where they could go beyond covering up their shame, and start to look into reality. These conversations allow teachers to realize that the cause of their failure lies not only in them but something wider and is a public matter to be collectively inquired.

When Anne Marie joins that group, she brings with her the words the parents used to describe the same impasse, and for the first time the two universes try to understand each other. This group becomes an experimental space where words are sought that would be able to express both suffering and aspiration in way that are not demeaning or humiliating to the other side. That joint inquiry to describe the situation in acceptable terms lays the foundation for a future public debate, then of a partnership between parents and school.

The next turning point is to move that conversation which is still informal and private into an institutional and public one. For this another crucial strategy has to be elaborated by Anne Marie in order to reveal to the institution the intolerable situation of the poorest.

3. The poorest, touchstone of democratic institutions

It appears in the story that the first time Anne Marie was considered by the institution as a useful partner was when she brought up the situation of Gregoire and other children who were not enrolled in any school. Gregoire's situation was the worst and Anne Marie found it intolerable. As all the different actors were justifying themselves and passing the buck to the next, it was finally the institution itself that had to be confronted. Anne Marie did not create a situation in which a large number of families put pressure on the institution; instead she revealed an extreme situation and showed that it was contradicting the institution's own rules that all children have to be enrolled in school. The institution then recognized that their mission was not fulfilled and that they needed Anne Marie to understand how to fulfill it.

Later on, when Claude Pair enters into the story he has, at a much higher level the same basic attitude. As the head of the regional school system who recognizes the deficit in the relationship between school and parents when parents are from very poor area, he knows that he needs the poorest parents to have a voice, those who are the furthest away from school. It is they who will reveal the shortcomings of a whole system and help fix it.

Little by little all the different actors come to accept the idea that if the school takes the means to listen to the families whose cultural and social distance to the school is the greatest, it will follow that all the parents will be included in the exchange. What can be understood intellectually proves to be true in practice: the contribution of the poorest parents raises fundamental questions, and revives the highest values of the school -- that the school's honor is to serve all.

4 . Not just to seek the voice of the poor, but real partnership.

What struck us very much in that story is how both Anne Marie and Claude were not satisfied with just listening to the voice of the poor. Claude wanted to make sure the colloquium would be about all parents, and Anne Marie wanted the poor not only to complain but to bring with them other people with whom they had had successful partnership. Both were afraid that "listening to the poor" could move people but not be effective in making a real institutional and public learning. By suggesting that the Fourth World Movement be consulted to prepare the colloquium, Claude was looking for more than testimonies. He was looking for a group who was able to bring to the table the voice of the poor but also to make sense of it, to show how to take that voice seriously, learn from it, and act on it. He was looking for meaningful conversations with the very poor that had already started, in which the institution could join and from which it could benefit in learning how it and the very poor could to talk to each other.

One of the results of the colloquium is that a permanent regional body is now in charge of training teachers to know about the lives of the poorest and also to look for, support, encourage and disseminate any experience of successful partnership between very poor parents and school. The institution sees these experiences as crucial if it is to continue learning, changing and bettering itself. It is worth noting that another outcome could have been to have representatives of the poor gain a permanent seat in some governing body of the institution. "Bring us some poor and we will make democracy with them on our turf." Instead, the institution and the Fourth World Movement have created a process by which democracy can be advanced anywhere in the world : a process whereby the excluded poor and local actors of an institution succeed in overcoming this impasse, in creating conversation. Then, the institution as a whole, giving value to the outcome of the process sees its role in creating the permanent infrastructures that will enable such individual initiatives to appear. It is that this point that it makes some organic changes, that one can say that the whole endeavor did have some political impact.

This dynamic attitude in which people who know or have known poverty play a crucial role (they participate in the training of teachers and the support of new experiments), is open to new forms of poverty and new exclusion, always looking for the poorest and most remote from the school. Instead of bringing any definite solution. It turns the institution itself into a permanent learner of who are the poorest and most excluded and of how useful conversation and partnership could be established with them. That learning comes from seeking the practitioners (both from inside the excluded groups and from inside the institution) who are already trying to do that. The institution must value their effort, and help them to reflect on their experiences, tell their story, and share their reflection so they contribute to the common good.

A RESPONSE:

In this response to Bruno Tardieu's paper I propose (i) to talk about why I've found the paper interesting and provocative from the standpoint of democratic political theory; (ii) to raise a couple of questions for him about his analysis; and (iii) to raise some questions for social scientists thinking about including the excluded poor in our own research on democratic institutions and societies.

(i) Tardieu's analysis as a contribution to democratic theory.

A great deal of democratic theory today is concerned with group differences and political exclusion. Theorists ask questions like: Do putatively neutral democratic institutions in fact work to the disadvantage of minority groups? Are rules of formal inclusion sufficient to allow the expression and fair adjudication of minority interests, or are group specific remedies needed -- group rights, group-based representation, vetoes, and so on? Questions tend, in other words, to revolve around the sorts of democratic mechanisms that might adequately include marginalized groups, and the pressure that would have to be brought to bear to put these mechanisms in place.

Tardieu's work casts interesting light on this whole array of questions, bringing the experiences of the very poor into the picture, and showing institutional changes that have come about through a particular kind of social and political activism. I want to suggest that stories such as that of the Arras Colloquium help to move us away from conceptualizing these questions about democracy and inclusion in terms simply of interests, of the articulation of political preferences, of contests of political power, or of institutional reforms.

Inclusion is more than a struggle for power

A first insight provided by Tardieu's talk is that while the effort to bring the excluded poor into educational institutions is without doubt a struggle, it is not a struggle between constituencies, for control of a common resource. Rather, it's a struggle by advocates of the poor to forge cross-group connections, and a struggle by members of each group to develop a language and a practice that will allow them to be true to their respective and their shared aspirations.

An important feature of this common interest in change is the universalistic norms central to many public institutions. The focus of ATD Fourth World's activism has been public institutions governed by these sorts of universalistic norms: schools, for example, whose central aim is `to ensure all children an equal opportunity to learn and succeed'. Now we don't want to be naive about this -- the structure of educational institutions also reflects all sorts of particular interests, and less democratic norms and practices. But Tardieu brings out the motivational force of norms of universality, and the ways in which those inside as well as outside an institution can be moved to address how that institution's failure to live up to its own universalistic intent when it comes to groups such as the very poor.

So the key obstacle to inclusion is not that the privileged cling to power (though they may), but that there are systematic forms of indifference or blindness to how institutional practices betray norms intrinsic to the institution and to the motivations of its members. The challenge is to bring those inside the institution to see the excluded in a less distorted way, and so to see the proper extension of norms they already accept.

This is part of Tardieu's argument against those approaches that encourage the poor and other excluded groups to seize power, or to force previously hegemonic groups to comply with a new set of distributions of power and resources. He shows that the story is not about competition between interests, but rather about providing structures within which players can live up to shared aspirations. This suggests that self-interest is not intractable, but that it takes a particular kind of learning and empathy for citizens' egalitarian commitments to overcome ingrained yet distorted interpretations of what their principles demand.

Those inside institutions have distorted understandings of the excluded: these relate to differences between group-specific experiences and worldviews

The case study shows that those within the educational system really don't get what the lives of the very poor are like. They may know facts of a student's behavior (that got them shunted off to the social worker), and even facts of poor families' circumstances, but they still fail to see what extreme poverty is like as a way of life. This allows them to project failures of inclusion onto the character of the excluded: the parents don't care about the education of their kids; the kids don't want to learn; the parents make no sense when they speak on behalf of their children.

Now these false interpretations speak to lack of contact with the lives of the very poor, and also to the appeal of ignorance -- it saves one from the frightening prospect of looking directly at one's own inefficacy, or at the institution's failings. Moreover, exclusion helps to turn the very poor into the people the stereotypes depict -- they cease to expect good things from the institution, become passive clients, and despair of conveying their suffering or their needs.

This gulf of understanding can't be remedied by the formal openness of democratic institutions: the very poor become predisposed not to participate or trust, and the privileged are predisposed to misunderstand the words and actions of marginalized groups. So, as Tardieu puts it, the poor do not lack a voice, but rather lack listeners. It's not enough simply to say that they've the same right as everyone else to represent their interests democratically. The institution has to reach out to the excluded, in a way that opens new channels of democratic dialogue.

Institutional and relational changes

The gulf in understanding and experience that separates the excluded from those within public institutions also suggests that the solution does not lie simply in changes to formal democratic rules or procedures. The accomplishments of inclusion highlighted by Tardieu's stories do involve institutional innovation, and specific mechanisms of inclusion: there are colloquia, public meetings, changed school curricula, and bureaucratic shifts.

But the stories are above all about changes to relationships between groups, changes enabled by institutional innovations, but not reducible to these innovations. The key term is `dialogue' -- communication that allows the very poor, their allies, and other members of dominant institutions to reinterpret themselves and retell their stories in the light of new possibilities and existing aspirations. Institutional changes are important as vehicles for this sort of cultural and social change.

On the part of the very poor, a language is created in which to express their aspirations, and they become able to see these aspirations mirrored in institutions that had previously excluded them as a constituency worthy of notice.

On the part of the privileged, there is a sense not only that their institutions have failed to live up to aspirations of service and universality, but that change can take place without undermining one's whole way of life, without dooming one to disappointment and disillusionment, and that an opening to the poor will in fact be an avenue to living up to one's higher aspirations.

Now we might be tempted to describe this shift in states of affairs as reflecting changed preferences, or changed interests on the part of individual players. But Tardieu is highlighting the extent to which normative commitments to universality themselves take on content through relationships. Before and after the changes Tardieu describes, those within the institution felt themselves committed to universality; what changed were the social relationships that gave content to that normative commitment. Restoring universality to the institution turns out to require changed forms of interaction between players, with an eye toward a particular quality of understanding and relationship.

And so while the story of the Arras Colloquium holds lessons about institutional responses to exclusion, it also should remind us that institutions provide contexts for the cultural work that needs to take place, without themselves accomplishing or guaranteeing that work.

So in thinking about how to make democratic institutions more inclusive, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that formal inclusion is not itself the goal, and will not itself remedy the problems of groups such as the very poor. If Tardieu is right, institutional changes can at best make space for the necessary forms of interaction, relationship, and understanding between social groups: these latter should be our criteria of institutional success.

Two Questions for Tardieu

First, a pair of questions about the universalistic commitments of institutions

On the one hand: Is the norm of inclusion, of universality, specific to certain kinds of public institutions, or are there `higher aspirations' in any organization, and so room for ally relationships and changes of the sorts you described? In other words, given the central role of institutional commitments to universality in Tardieu's account, could the model apply to for-profit enterprises, or to organizations in civil society that seem to have more parochial aims?

On the other hand, does universalism play such an undiluted role as the organizing norm of public institutions like schools, governments, and so on? Or is universalism itself a contested concept, both in terms of its own demands (for some it requires substantive equality, for others a formal equality of treatment), and also weighed against other norms such as efficiency, narrow procedural fairness, or majoritarianism? And if universalism is itself contested and only one normative commitment among others, does this complicate an agenda centered on allowing individuals and institution to become true to their own aspirations?

Second, is inclusion always mutually beneficial?

The story of the Arras Colloquium, and the others in your book, are about institutional and relational changes to include the very poor, in ways that makes everyone's life better. The poor are served by the institution and see themselves reflected in it; all players are empowered by recognizing and affirming the institution's universal norms; and the institution itself works more effectively.

I want to ask whether these cases of exclusion are typical in allowing this sort of win-win outcome. Are there more systematic or intractable conflicts of interest to be dealt with in other public contexts, where better conversation and understanding may not lead to resolutions acceptable to all? And if this is the case, might there not be the need for wielding power in the name of inclusion, for more conventional kinds of political pressure and interest group activism?

Or to put it more provocatively, are there cases of exclusion where the privileged understand the situation, and the aspirations of the very poor, quite well, and are simply unwilling to give up benefits that rely upon the disadvantage of others?

Three questions for social scientists, about including the very poor in research on democracy

It is interesting to reflect on how the lessons of Tardieu's work speak to the research agendas and methodologies of those whose research is on democracy and exclusion.

First, there's the fact that we, too, may have overlooked the very poor in our description of the constituencies in play in particular settings.

Second, it may be the case, as I suggested above, that Tardieu's account of the politics of including the very poor speaks against certain models of politics -- as a contest of interests, for example, or as the institutional mediation of exogenous preferences, or as a struggle for resources among competing groups.

Third, it seems to me that the lessons of Arras about misunderstanding, dialogue, and relationship may have even deeper implications for the project of social science research. The story suggests that we systematically misrecognize the motivations and aspirations of the very poor until we see them from their own contexts, `at eye level', as the paper puts it. To the extent that inclusion requires actual dialogue (rather than representation, or shorthand about interests, or generic descriptions of human needs), then we may have to give the poor a place in our own processes of theory-building. We may need to be allies of the poor, or at least their real-life interlocutors, before we can adequately theorize routes to their inclusion in social and political institutions.

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________ 1995 Lieu de memoire . In  Quart Monde. no 155, pp 43-50. Paris: Editions Quart Monde.


________. 1997 The Human Rights of Children growing up in Extreme Poverty: What lacks of Basic Securities?  in Eurosocial no 62, pp 209-226.

________ 1998. Community Computer,  in High technology and Low Income Community/D.A. Schon, B. Sanyal, and W. Mitchel. Boston: MIT Press.

Vos van Steenwijk, Alwine de. 1978. The Fourth World, Touch Stone for Democracy in Europe. Paris : Fourth World Publication. 

________ 1996. Father Joseph Wresinski-Voice of the poorest  .Los Angeles: Queenship Publishing Company. Translated by Charles Sleeth from Pere Joseph . Editions Quart Monde, 1989.

Wilson, William Julius. 1987 The Truly Disadvantaged.  Chicago: University of Chilcago Press, 1987.

_______ 1995 Poverty, Inequality and the future of social policy: western states in the new world order.  New York : Russel Sage Foundation.

_______ 1996 When Work Disappears : the world of the urban poor.  New York : Alfred A. Knopf.

Wresinski, Joseph. 1983. Les Pauvres sont l'Eglise.  Paris: Le Centurion.

_______ . 1983 Echec a la misere, conference faite la Sorbonne le 1er Juin, 1983. Paris: Editions Quart Monde.  

_______ 1992 Blessed are you the Poor,  Fourth World Publication. Transl  1984 Heureux vous les Pauvres,  Cana, Paris.

_______ 1994. Chronic Poverty and Lack of basic Security: A Report of the Economic and Social Council of France. Paris London and Landover, MD: Fourth World Publications.Translated from Grande Pauvrete et Precarite Economique et Sociale.  Paris: Journal Officiel de la Republique Francaise. Avis et Rapport du Conseil Economique et Social. 1987.

_______ . 1995 Father Joseph Wresinski, Founder Atd Fourth World Movement.  Excerpts from interviews. Paris, London and Landover, Md.: Fourth World Publications.