Originally a lecture given as part of the examination for a Professorship in School and Culture, this article brings together elements for a reflection about the relationship between School and Culture in view of the identification customarily established between the school institution and the culture. Such identification, a priori impossible, is actualized in practice, despite contestation, because, as history registers, it is impinged with great brutality. Initially, the text discusses how Culture (defined as the set of activities that give descriptions of the world through "free expression") is experienced in the practice of the school institution. Next, the article describes the political formulae that conceal the force relationship behind the process of institutionalization of School. The latter, based on the premise that it is the only efficient means to educate individuals, has been presenting itself as the enduring solution to the dilemma. It is argued that the dilemma of the identification of School and Culture exists because alluring formulae manage to hide the secret of a logic that rests upon the force relationships existing in the work of construction of a National State of which we, just as the school, are products. In this context, the analysis of the School versus Culture relationship is made in analogy to that of the State versus Nation linkage.
School; Culture; State; Nation; Socio-history