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This paper defines the notion of emancipation by introducing the dialectic between freedom and submission to authority and the distinction between freedom and emancipation, where emancipation implies universal access to the exercise of freedom before the law. Modernity thus essentially binds emancipation, education and, in its republican form, universal schooling. However, the intellectual and political program faces a number of difficulties, particularly the guiding principle of making the practice of civil and political rights subordinate to the exercise of rational thought and critical judgment. Indeed, individual independence seems to be acquired by means other than school; the new audio-visual and digital media with their modes of communication and symbolic authority marginalize the culture of school. It therefore becomes a large and problematic issue to determine whether the public school is still a force for emancipation.