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In his “letter to all those who love school”, the French Minister of Youth and Education, Luc Ferry, presents a rather gloomy picture of compulsory education in France. As summarized in “Le Monde”, the first weakness, which amounts to a “scandal”, is illiteracy, long denied by the politicians. The second deficiency is “unacceptable”: 158,000 young people left the educational system in 2002 with neither diploma nor qualifications. The third difficulty is “troubling”: more than 80,000 serious acts of violence were reported in educational institutions in 2002.
The Minister went on to analyse the “roots of the illness”: “an increase in individualism has precipitated the crisis in the school, by favouring innovation to the detriment of tradition, authenticity at the expense of merit, entertainment over against work, and unrestricted freedom in place of freedom given order by laws.” This philosophy has resulted in considerable damage, particularly in reading. In this respect, Luc Ferry criticises the principle advanced by the 1989 legislation according to which “ the student is at the heart of the system”. This attitude leads “too easily to erroneous popularity-seeking interpretations”. At the centre of the educational system, Le Monde concludes, one should impose the role of transmitting knowledge on the teachers and the requirement of working on the students. Nothing is less certain, yet by thus wishing to reverse educational trends with no further reflection, the school risks a buffeting from a strong wind of conservatism. Moreover, this debate cannot be conducted without making reference to another issue to which it is related: the authority of the school. How can one make use of this so that students are successful and at the same time allow a child to grow up in complete freedom? This is a subject to consider with regard to the inevitable constraints with which the road towards autonomy is strewn, and with regard to nostalgia for a time which represents a return to order and discipline. A topic which will interest this minister-philosopher who has recently published, with Grasset, a book entitled “What is a successful life?”.
The letter, which had a print-run of 820,000 copies and was distributed for free to around 800,000 teachers, was made available to the public last 17 April.
See: http://www.education.gouv.fr/actu/2003/lettre_ecole.htm
See also:
http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3208--317161-,00.html
http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3224--317024-,00.html
http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3224--317022-,.html
Image : from the Website Écoles différentes
http://ecolesdifferentes.free.fr/
