France provides an ideal context for beginning to understand how schooling affects students’ understanding of their national identity. In this article, Kyle Greenwalt examines the discursive practices through which a group of French secondary students constructed their national identity. Following an appraisal of the historiographical literature of nineteenth-century French nation-building, the author proceeds with a phenomenological analysis of the discourses students used to make sense of their lived experiences with teachers and schooling. Greenwalt evaluates the continued presence and salience of traditional versions of French national identity, suggesting the need to reconsider the relationships among social solidarity, pluralism, and national identity and calling into question the contemporary relevance of  structural representations of the nation-state.

Click here to purchase this article.
Click here to purchase this issue.

Kyle A. Greenwalt is an assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. His work analyzes the intersections of popular culture, public schooling, and the performance of professional and civic identities. Kyle has published in such journals as Teaching and Teacher Education and Education and Culture and is currently finishing work on a book, The School as a Site of Memory: Public Schooling, Nationalism, and Educational Reform. Prior to his appointment at Michigan State University, Kyle taught social studies in northern Minnesota and EFL in eastern Hungary.