A specific feature of French educational system is school based vocational training. This kind of schooling, which started at the end of the 19tln century, is the result of cooperation between State and managers from the most advanced fields of industry and trade. So, State intervention was not one sided, and was oriented towards fulfilling expectations of industrial fields that had great strategic and commercial importance for the Country. Until the second World War, State maintained a degree of intervention, acceptable in a liberal economy setting, as an incentive for private companies to regulate training by themselves : it created a diploma, the "CAP", and an apprenticeship tax. Because of war, Vichy's government, Liberation and demographic decline, public intervention increased and schooling became more widespread. A "French model" of schooling diploma-centred, emerged with declared support of the most dynamic fields of industry and trade which later questioned it, and school based vocational training is now challenged by other forms of vocational skills acquisition. However 40 % of pupils of an age group are still trained at school.

Revue française de pédagogie Recherches en éducation 180 | juillet-août-septembre 2012 Le CAP : Regards croisés sur un diplôme centenaire La légitimité du CAP : une conquête de haute lutte The legitimacy of the CAP : a hard-fought conquest La legitimidad del CAP : una conquista en reñida lucha Die Legitimität des CAP : eine hart erkämpfte Errungenschaft

Training or Culture: the Union Action of CFTC and CFDT-Affiliated Middle Managers and Workers in the French Chemical Industry from 1946 to 1971. This article first identifies the different conceptions of training that took hold in the CFTC (Conféderation Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens) union and its successor the CFDT (Conféderation Française Démocratique du Travail) in the French chemical industry in the period from the end of the Second World War through the 1960s. It then shows how these conceptions were influenced by political and social changes in union organization. Middle managers saw training as a means of adapting to technical change, better managing relations between the different social groups within the company, and being protected against unemployment. Workers, on the other hand, were most concerned with the social and political implications of the training of union officials. For them it was a matter of gaining access to culture in order to understand the world and thereby be able to transform it. In the 1960s, union activists influenced by theories of the •New Working Class” realized a project of federating the industry that brought together workers, technicians, and middle managers. With this change in the social composition of the organization, diffusion of managers’ conceptions to the federation as a whole became possible.

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