The ethnographic field of research of this study was conducted in a “Unité localisée pour l’inclusion scolaire (Ulis)” (located unit for school inclusion) within the French national education system. The goal of this study is to describe the actual school-life of pupils who suffer from “cognitive disturbing functions”. Participating observation is the main methodological tool in this present thesis. After a long period of exploration, the“malentendus” are chosen as privileged units for analysis. The typology of these“malentendus” and their analyses show that the specificities of the very pupils’ schoolexperience are mainly the “accentuation”, the emphasis of what pupils of ordinary classes live. Cognitive disturbing functions do not lead to a difference of nature but to a difference of intensity in the transmission and in the acquisition of knowledge, in comparison with pupils who are in great difficulties in ordinary classes; it appears that numerous pupils of that Unit reject their handicapped status and dislike their school-life in this specific structure. The confrontation with the visions of ordinary class pupils and the rejection (the casting out) of some their schoolmates amplify sometimes this feeling of discomfort and ill-being; they also lead the pupils of this very structure to mask the fact they belong to these “located units for a school inclusion” (Ulis). To finish, the pupils of that very unit and their own families try to dotheir best to avoid their children and adolescents being advised or forced to enter a medicoprofessional institute (IMPro: specific schools and homes for intellectually handicapped and disabled youngsters).
