Pupils from a “Priority Education Zone” (ZEP) at the Paris Opera

This article examines young adolescents’ relationship with highbrow culture, based on a study of a “cultural partnership” between a grade eight class at a school in the suburbs of Paris, and the Paris Opera. In addition to traditional variables, modes of sociability within the peer group largely explain the different forms of adhesion to the project. The adolescents tend to approach highbrow works by activating schemas of perception and appreciation connected to their familiarity with mass culture. The result is forms of appropriation which are original but have little legitimacy, and are consequently seldom valued in the academic environment.