90

The basic relation in France since the 1789 revolution between the secularization of the State and the democratization of the society explains both the major importance of the school issue and the difficulty the successive authorities have had in organizing stable institutions in this area. Between the middle of the 19th and the end of the 20 th centuries, civil and secular education developed while religious private schools diminished. But because of freedom of education, whose principle has always been on the books, the State has had to delegate a part of its public service mission to a private sector recognized as having “its own character”. In the name of decentralization the state seems to be trying to get out of what it continues to call national education. This produces persistent tensions that are more revelatory than the?weight of the past of the new problems of political decision-making due to the reactivity of the society. The society is generally-speaking more conscious than in 1850 of the importance of school in which the range of beliefs has grown.