Publish at April 25 2023 Updated October 29 2025
"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine, when he says that an unjust law is no law at all."
Martin Luther King
Higher education students individually or collectively stand up to what they see as injustices, unfair decisions, or impediments to their ability to think and act freely for their own sake, for their world in which they want to live..
The concept of "disobedience to learn," also known as civil disobedience, is an educational approach that encourages students to challenge established norms and explore new intellectual territory. The concept dates back to at least 1849 with Thoreau's work called "Resistance to Civil Government". Civil disobedience is a way of expressing disagreement with a policy or practice and creating a dialogue with authorities to bring about positive change.
This can include participating in protests, boycotting activities or events, or refusing to comply with certain rules or policies. Civil disobedience encourages students to actively engage in critical thinking about social, political, and environmental issues and to take concrete action to promote change.
However, it is important to emphasize that civil disobedience must be done responsibly and thoughtfully, taking into account the potential consequences for oneself, one's health and integrity, and that of others. Students must be aware of their rights and responsibilities and be prepared to face the consequences of their actions.
In education, disobedience for learning can be seen as an approach to experiential learning that emphasizes personal practice. By encouraging students to step out of their comfort zones and challenge established norms, this approach can help promote creativity, innovation and critical thinking. It can also help students develop a deeper understanding of social, environmental, and political issues, as well as the skills necessary to effect positive change in the world around them.
But, this orientation places institutions under paradoxical injunctions. Organize an organized framework to optimize resources in the service of learning versus allowing contestation to take place. Disobeying in order to learn places teachers in opposition to the rules, programs, and values of the educational system. This disobedience puts them at risk for their careers. For example, choosing to teach according to the method that suits them best, rather than according to a ministerial circular, is a risk-taking.
Freedom and its cost would be learned. In his book "Learning to Disobey," Chambat (2022), traces resistance movements that developed in the heart of schools. The author recalls the educational work of the Paris Commune, the denunciation of computerized student tracking, the birth of unionism in education at the Kanak popular schools of the 1980s, anti-hierarchical struggles and resistance to Vichy "re-education". It is a veritable manual of insubordination that the author offers us, specific to the school context, especially for teachers and administrative staff. This aim is based on a humanist ideal that places the individual at the pinnacle of values.
"The aim of society is to offer man the full development of his possibilities, of his reason, of his love, of his creativity; all social arrangements must make it possible to overcome man's alienation and infirmity and to make him capable of asserting his individuality and being truly free."
Erich Fromm
For students learning to disobey is more than seizing the spaces left available, it is creating breaches, organizing the real differently, sometimes provoking disorder, challenging the illegitimate legal, for the law is not the only source of legitimacy. Let us remember that what Hitler did was done under the cover of legality. He was legally elected and sought to dress up his decisions in terms of reference texts. The apartheid laws in South Africa were iniquitous, but they were the laws on the books.
Some profess to train climate activists and teach civil disobedience. This process would go much further than technical learning and would be experienced as a socialization process for example among young Extinction Rebellion activists in Paris. The proposed courses create an "esprit de corps" and favor the internalization of a collective political identity.
If in the stories of "Sophie's Misfortunes" by the Countess of Segur the moral of the adventures reminded us of the virtue of obedience, the virtue of disobedience would be at its peak today with the outbursts we know.
The act of disobedience teaches us to become ourselves and to build our own limits. But disobedience as an act of taking our place in the world is an act of speech. Henri Laborit asserts that when faced with a predator or a threat the animal had only three options: flee, cope or suffer. However, humans devise other means. They have learned the art of speech, of dissimulation, of cunning, of interpretation, of ambiguity, of negotiation, of composition.
They also learn symbolically to recompose the meaning of the world which produces new realities acceptable to everyone. They succeed in doing this whenever they maintain dialogue and the associated qualities of listening. It is an emergency in our societies to keep the dialogue alive whatever happens. Disobey, yes, but while continuing to dialogue and search for common meaning.
Illustration: Deposit Photos - kamilabay1
Sources:
Falcón y Tella, M. (1997). Civil disobedience. Interdisciplinary Journal of Legal Studies, 39, 27-67.
https://doi.org/10.3917/riej.039.0027
Chambat, G. (2022). Learning to disobey: a short history of the school that resists. Libertalia.
https://www.decitre.fr/livres/apprendre-a-desobeir-9782377292295.html#ae85
Chassé, É. (2012). Disobeying. Collegiate Pedagogy vol. 26, no. 1, Fall 2012.
https://mobile.eduq.info/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11515/21889/Chasse-26-1-2012.pdf
Abajo-Sanchez, C. Becoming a climate activist: Civil disobedience training as a socialization process among young activists of Extinction Rebellion in Paris, https://ojs.up.pt/index.php/esc-ciie/article/view/359
EFH Experiential Pedagogy https://www.efh.fr/ressources/quest-ce-que-la-pedagogie-experientielle/
Muel-Dreyfus, F. (2004). The re-education of sociology under the Vichy regime. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 153), 65-77. https://doi.org/10.3917/arss.153.0065
The Word and the Rest. Resisting Civilian Government - https://lemotetlereste.com/litteratures/resistanceaugouvernementcivil/
New Obs. Student Filing Ministry Checks Out Last Resisters - https://www.nouvelobs.com/rue89/rue89-nos-vies-connectees/20111116.RUE5715/fichage-des-eleves-le-ministere-mate-les-derniers-resistants.html
The Humanologist. Flee, cope or suffer - https://lhumanologue.fr/1231/fuite-faire-face-fuir-ou-subir
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