Filling in the Gaps. Alternative schools in French rural areas: from the dismantling of public education to a new horizon for educational entrepreneurs.

Résumé En

Developing a geographical analysis, this paper questions the recent and accelerateddiffusion of “alternative” schools (mobilizing alternative pedagogies, and of non-contractual private status) in the French rural space. Through an exhaustive mapping of the school market in three departments, the life stories of the educational entrepreneurs who have set up these schools, and a territorial re-contextualization, it appears that this niche offer is both militant in marginal areas seen as a fertile ground for alternatives, and opportunistic in the interstices of the public system that is withdrawing from low-density areas. Using the outdoor educational spaces, from the playground to the valley, the educators make space as a part of the alternative pedagogy. It is based on a commercial logic that is ambivalent in its methods (entrepreneurial) and values (alternatives to the dominant educational and societal system). This implicit transfer of a public service competence to the private sectorultimately raises questions about its durability in marginal areas.