„Warum gehen die Leute noch zur Schule?“ Debatt en über formale Bildung als Ausdruck sich verändernder Beschäftigungslandschaften im postkolonialen Nordbenin.

The growing insecurity generated by school and the despair of young graduates are challenging the discourse that presents formal education as the classic path to success and making a living. This questioning is often a source of misunderstanding within families, between disillusioned young people and their parents. It is, in fact, an opposition between two generations that project different, even antagonistic, perspectives on the same reality (the usefulness of school). Indeed, while parents see all the opportunities that school offers them, young people think about the time they are investing and the unemployment they will face at the end. Based on ethnographic field research, including interviews, questionnaires and observations with young people, parents, teachers and other actors, I analyse how education campaigns reinforce feelings of social prestige and hope, and thus serve as an alibi for promoting mass schooling in rural areas of northern Benin. It also shows how perceptions of school and prospects can influence young people's decisions about their future orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]