Abstract

The erosion of educational authority is less than a crisis. The first two sections of this text involve the clarification of the concept of educational authority. It’s also an opportunity to refute critical theses derived from psychological or pedagogical writings that aim to purify educational acts all forms of authority. These approaches, which often characterise authority as a form of coercion, weaken the anthropological perspective, which is at the heart of the educational process. If authority is necessary, this is quite simply because this never authorises present day behaviour. In the third and final section, we present three lectures in order to understand this phenomenon of erosion.