Atelier « Parent education and (non-)schooling», 10e Congrès international de l’EuroSEAS

Pour citer ce billet : “Workshop ‘Parent education and (non-)schooling’, 10th International Congress of EuroSEAS”, by Steven Prigent and Juliette Sendra, published on Transmission, savoirs, savoir-faire et valeurs sociales: https://nyantri.hypotheses.org/619

The 10th International Congress of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS) was held in Humboldt University (Berlin) from 10 to 13 September 2019. During this event, Steven Prigent and Juliette Sendra organised a workshop entitled « Parent education and (non-)schooling » in which Jean-Marc de Grave (Institut de Recherches Asiatiques) and Nolwen Henaff (Centre Population et Développement) participated.

The panel proposed to study the relationships of families to school institution. In that way, the participants were conveyed to pay attention to educational practices and (non) school enrolment family strategies of children and teenagers within a broad educational context (school and non-school).

Motivations to school – or not – children are multiple (religious, ethical, economical, etc.). They participate in parental educational choices often correlated to strategies of distinction or reproduction (as defined by Pierre Bourdieu). Parents can be actively involved in the schooling of their children at different degrees (choice of school, moral support, homework help, funding for additional classes, school counselling, etc.), can prefer to stay away from school knowledge and rely on teachers, can leave more or less flexibility to children or young people, or can even refuse schooling.

So, the discussion highlighted the differences and similarities in the relationships between families and schools, based on case studies from different countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam) and concerning different disciplinary approaches. Participants had also considered the links existing between the modes of learning developed at school and out of school, both at the level of practice and at the level of underlying aims.

Finally, school as a particular form of education brings into play exogenous norms and references within a given social context. The school project is indeed based on education conceptions linked to national and international policies. The interventions were thus proposed to consider the possible implications of these policies at the level of school and non-school parental logics.

Summary of interventions 

JEAN-MARC DE GRAVE – Aix-Marseille University, Institut of Asian Research (IrAsia)

Paper title: Educational strategies of high school students and their parents, Yogyakarta Special Region, Indonesia

Paper abstract:

The relationship established between parents and their children as part of high school education and – in its aftermath – post-high school is characterised by its diversity. Negotiations between the two parties often take place, but the rules of schooling oblige the family to adopt a compact endogenous strategy in any case. These rules include especially recruitment on the basis of dossier and the potential access to university. In a related way, educational, security, socio-cultural and / or religious settings also play an important role. The typical-strategy is to compose with all of these factors and to continually readjust them according to the student’s results. Through cases studies from ethnography, I propose here to put into perspective the role of students and parents in relation to school and ministerial policies, in order to grasp the formal and informal logics that come into play from the point of view of high school students and their respective families.

NOLWEN HENAFF – Paris-Descartes University, Population and Development Center (Ceped)

Paper title: Education logics in Vietnam: for better or for worse?

Paper abstract:

“Vietnamese parents can sacrifice everything, sell their houses and land just to give their children an education,” –  Vietnam’s education minister Phung Xuan Nha said at a conference in December 2017. The whole country has therefore strived to develop education over the past decades, with impressive results as shown by Education for all achievements and PISA international tests results. The goal is commendable, but the means questionable. The desire for school education has created tremendous pressure on the country and its people and the cost of the promised bright, but uncertain, future is high both the education system and the children.
We propose here to show how educational practices in Vietnam are in contradiction with the logics that underlie them. This article is based on secondary sources and the results of two surveys: a series of interviews with Vietnamese students in Singapore in November 2016 and March 2017, and a questionnaire survey of students from three elite high schools. Ho Chi Minh City in November 2018.The first part will explain how the search for the best educational, on the part of parents, teachers and the State, led to the development of the ‘performance disease. The second part will analyse the consequences in relation to the educational logics of the parents and the State.

STEVEN PRIGENT – Bordeaux University, Institut of Asian research (IrAsia)

Paper title: Why schooling children in a patronage system? (Cambodia)

Paper abstract:

While international organizations have been promoting democratic and empowerment educational values for more than ten years in Cambodia, the ministry of education has been maintaining an informal economy of patronage. In this context, teachers are allowed to give extra lessons to their pupils as an addition to their salary. These lessons are private and, therefore, paid by parents.

Since it functions based on a ‘patronage contract’, one might suppose that the public school system in Cambodia remains an inegalitarian and non-meritocratic institution, excluding the poorest pupils and not recognising the most deserving. After giving empirical depth to this patronage system, this communication will question the meaning Cambodian rice growers give to school education in such a context.

JULIETTE SENDRA – Aix-Marseille University, Institut of Asian research (IrAsia)


Paper title: Logics and educationals strategies of parents seized in the new economic situation, the javanese village of Bejiharjo, Indonesia.

Paper abstract:

Within the village context of Bejiharjo, the educational aims advanced by the national orientations are not always on coherence with the local and community educational logics. The school remains largely perceived by families as an institution outside the village (knowledge and finalities).

Today, Bejiharjo is subject to strong economic and tourist contingencies. It is observed that the underlying aims of educational policies will go into synergy with the way in which the local economy has developed, thereby influencing parents’ educational practices. With the increase of the financial capital of these families, we notice a greater investment in the schooling of their children (continued high school education, tutoring, private schools, etc.).
Increasingly the relationship of families to the school institution become individualised and the school is constituted as an exclusive mode of training that tends to be unmissable.
After having brought to light the different conceptions of school education of families and the meaning they give to the schooling of their children, the contribution intends to capture the impact of socio-economic changes in the educational strategies of families.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Jean-Marc de Grave (5 octobre 2020). Atelier « Parent education and (non-)schooling», 10e Congrès international de l’EuroSEAS. Transmission, savoirs, savoir-faire et valeurs sociales. Consulté le 15 février 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/sgwz


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