With second modernity, the construction of the meaning of a school system in the throes of de-institutionalization is no longer transcendent but immanent for pupils. The question of school experience and how students feel about their academic life needs to be raised. Our investigation leads us to posit that the feeling of academic suffering is becoming structural, albeit collectively disavowed. This article tries to shed light on the meaning of this collective disavowal and social « disappearing » of academic suffering, by the yardstick of contemporary social mutations, before setting up an ideal-typical typology of forms of pupils’ academic suffering.

Adolescence, 2011, T. 29 n° 3, pp. 637-664.