Abstract

In the context of a French school in crisis, the article defends a strong idea: the professional exercise, as degraded and dented as it may be, can only « hold » if there is a link between the teacher and his job that goes far beyond the contingencies of daily work. It is this link, which remains despite everything, that we will identify as the « happiness of the profession » of the primary school teacher. The problematization mobilizes the reflections of Kant and Osty to circumscribe the object by positioning happiness on the side of the profession (and not on the side of the work done). It is extended by a theorization of the « happiness of the profession », which relies on Freire and Jullien to define it as a potentiality, an inaccessible promise. It is then operationalized by the research on similar notions in the case of teachers, which is translated into the methodological choice of a questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered by the networks and included a quantitative component (an assessment of the potential of 45 concrete situations for « job happiness ») and a qualitative component (an open and spontaneous definition written by the respondents). The results of the survey develop the 10 components of « job happiness » (quantitative approach) (quantitative approach) and the triptych of the definition of this happiness (qualitative approach).