ABSTRACT
THE object of this paper is to attempt to clarify and evaluate a new aim in education. This aim is not present in educational activities as a new curricular objective. French in the primary school and psychology in the secondary school represent ways in which new aims can affect curricular objectives, but nothing like that is intended here. This new aim is to develop in children, over the whole period of their formal schooling, an important quality of character which can appropriately be called that of 'personal autonomy'.
