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The article focuses on the marginal status of teachers in the elite secondary school system of France in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The marginal status of the teachers is evident in their own hierarchical relations, repeated moves due to transfers and the resulting disruptions of their lives, relations with administrative staff, their class, status, and their social emotional lives. The key dimensions of the teachers' lives examined in the article include classroom dynamics, professional hierarchy, transfer promotional system, social structural conditions and rank, and social emotional factors. The fact that teachers occupied a position between the lower/working and bourgeois classes, that is between their class of origin and the privileged class they were educated with and eventually taught, marginalized their position. The kind of authority enjoyed by the teachers in the classroom without any competition is not enjoyed anywhere else in life. This authority is threatened by the hierarchy system that is prevalent in the school.

This study examines the youth society which was created in the lycées and collèges of France in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using literary and social-historical records the personal and social experiences of youth in this milieu are delineated. A literary ethnography is constructed that presents a composite portrait of these actors' lives and society. In addition to certain beliefs, practices, and rules, authoritarian/coercive relations and hierarchical social structures are found to characterize this youth society. Attention is directed to the importance of explaining the emergence of this historical instance of a youth society within an elite school system in a way which identifies important structural processes operating in this setting and the larger societal context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]