This work is based on two main areas: on the one hand, the private study of middle school students, a few discussed topic in science education (in mathematics); on the other hand, the teaching of the equations of the first degree with one unknown, which aggregates many elementary algebra concepts and which is a source of difficulties for students. Thanks to the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic (Chevallard, 1999), we re-examine these difficulties from an institutional point of view: we assume that some of the learning needs relative to private study and subject knowledge are not explicitly organized by the institution (Castela) while these needs are necesseray to build a an appropriate personal relationship to equations. Based on an ep...