It’s been 2 months that Christian Jegourel told me about a club he joined 1 year ago : the "Club of the Vigilants"; I discovered Charles Nouÿrit was also member of this club that organized monthly breakfasts and lunches around a specific subject.
This morning, Christian kindly introduced me to the club. The speaker of the month was Luc Ferry,
2002-2004 french Education Minister, philosopher and ex-teacher, and
direct descendant of Jules Ferry, the inventor of the secularist &
obligatory School in 1880. Luc gave an interesting conference on a
topic i wasn’t familiar with : "The ideal education".
Luc began to draw what was wrong in the French system:
1°) violence & lack of respect at school
2°) lack of scientific vocations
3°) High rates of school exits without significant diplomas (160.000 students a year)
4°)decline of the language mastery.
A
report shows that the worst dictation paper of a 1920′ class was better
than the the best one of a 1990′ class working on the same dictation.
L.Ferry, thinks education is a question of cultural transmission and
that pupils should first listen and work
instead of following the trend that consists in "just expressing
themselves". He calls this trend : the "over valorization of
self-expression" inherited from the 68′ era.
What should we do ? he said
- put
the max on the primary school to ensure pupils get the basics, mainly
reading and writing (education methods based on support seldom work - develop professional education system
- develop excellence centers within universities
Luc
pointed out the difficulty to achieve a reform in the french
Educational system. It actually requires at least 3 years because of
the inertia of the procedures and calendar, which delay is incompatible
with the 1-2 years turnover of french Education ministers…
For
that reason, he quote the creation in 1983 of the
vocationally-orientated baccalaureate (secondary school exam) as the
last main Educational move of the 2nd half of the XXth century.
Following
some questions, the former minister and philosopher pointed out the
difference between instruction (the name of the ministry before 1968)
and education (after 1968).:
Instruction has the meaning : to become someone else. It is a sublimation of the individual meaning :
Education has the meaning : to achieve oneself (no sublimation, neither discovery of another oneself).
As a conclusion, Luc said education required the basics of jewish and christian principles : love and morality.
I
agree with Luc that instruction and respect are a pre-requisite. But I
would add that that ability given to the students to express
themselves, in a second step, is a way to help them to manage on their
own in a world where everything is moving very fast.
Charles (who found
Luc Ferry was pompous), Christian and I followed up an interesting
conversation the evolution of ISPs, Google and the mobile players
(Christian, who has written a clever post on Google vs MS, is preparing an analysis of what a mobile player like Bouygues Telecom and a ISP like Free should do next…)
Leave a Reply