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‪Various research studies and evaluations have highlighted the growing grievances and uneasiness of schoolteachers in the face of the demands for student success and inclusion that have been made of them for several decades. Combining these observations, our research and Howard Becker's reflections on the genesis and driving forces of varying levels of social commitment, led us to study the relationships between the goals assigned and the resources allocated to schoolteachers in the education system. Extensive longitudinal research into novice schoolteachers’ changing priorities for action reveals that their initial socialisation and training strongly commit them to trying to prevent and regulate their pupils’ difficulties. However, more often than not, the extremely time-consuming nature and complexity of the operations required make this commitment untenable over the long term, within a school organisation that is increasingly saturated by contradictory injunctions (deemed irreconciliable by many of their more senior colleagues). Complementary analyses help us to understand that the policies of recent decades have effectively transferred to teachers the responsibility of ensuring the success of all their pupils through local pedagogical adjustments, without ensuring that the expected progress is fostered through appropriate adjustments to teachers’ training and working conditions. The result is a pervasive feeling of pedagogical powerlessness, with the professional suffering and risk of defensive reactions that this feeling induces when faced with the difficulties of a fraction of pupils.‪