pp. 81-115

The aim of this article, based on interviews carried out on a school-going public and on a study of statutory texts defining pupils’ rights, is to find out how the question of rights is introduced into the practice of the actors within the education system. In a more general manner, these pupils’ rights remain very formal and they are rarely present in the subjective experience of pupils. Internal rules and regulations of the school present these rules in a limited fashion and the punishment system is often judged as the arbitor by the pupils. An essential question is to know how the school order is built. The author is trying to find out to what extent the effective rights of the pupils which provide the structure of the everyday school life are based on legal texts, on relations of domination (determined by the status of reaching the majority, the social status or the diploma), or on contextualized teacher-pupil interpersonal arrangements.