10 years ago, young Quebec students took to the streets to refuse the neoliberal orientations of Jean Charest’s government in education. Establishment advocates then and now have sought to discredit them.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
In their minds, education must adapt to the evolution of techno-scientific capitalism, period. That young people can want anything other than to become the managers of tomorrow seems incomprehensible to them. This is why they do not understand why students take to the streets to refuse not only the commodification of education, but also the world governed by the powers of money, this world which seems to them unsurpassable even though he runs to his loss. It must be said that real change frightens them because they risk losing important privileges. Now, it is important to accomplish this change for the maintenance of the conditions of existence of life.
A big refusal
The youth of 2012, like that of the most recent mobilizations against global warming, understood well that the current mode of development leads to the destruction of living conditions. Young people see the economic and environmental contradictions of today’s society, they also see the sexist, racist, colonialist relations of domination, the unacceptable fate of the natives, the absence of democracy and self-determination of the peoples. She sees that if we stubbornly rush forward, we will achieve nothing but an avalanche of disasters and suffering. That’s why she said no in 2012, and that’s why she continues today to oppose the madness of supposedly sustainable “development” and infinite growth, yet unachievable on a finite planet.
Two opposing conceptions of education and of the world
One could say that a confrontation or struggle takes place between two groups to know what will be the orientation or the aims of education and of society in general. These two camps do not have the same conception of the human being, of education, of society, of what constitutes the “good life”, to speak like Marcel Rioux.
The mobilized youth believe that “another world is possible”, a fairer, more democratic and more ecological world. She wants an education that trains people capable of facing the glaring problems of the 21st century.and century. It is an emancipatory vision of education.
Adults of past generations who form the politico-economic elite think rather that education must form employable people adapted to the demands of the market, that research must propel new technology (robotics, artificial intelligence, etc.); all in order to maximize the accumulation of money for the benefit of the oligarchy, without regard to any other consideration. We are dealing here rather with a utilitarian or instrumental vision of education, pushed by those who think that we must submit to the demands of American cultural and economic imperialism and globalized capitalism. From their point of view, the only objective of the youth should be to integrate into the system of production, to do what the experts, the companies and the technocrats think they should do. They do not want to hear what the students have to say and rather want them to “find a job in the North” as soon as possible.
Urgency to change
However, the message of 2012, like the recent strikes on the climate, is precisely that the human, life, school and society cannot be reduced to factors of production with a view to economic accumulation. The sociologist and philosopher Michel Freitag had already warned us that the utilitarian conception of education would lead to its shipwreck and its complete subjection to the narrow priorities of the technico-economic system. He also warned against the impasse of globalization by saying that the current mode of development, based on infinite growth, could only lead to an ecological crisis insofar as it does not respect the limits of life and of the earth. The only way to avoid catastrophe is to reframe economic and technological development by setting thoughtful limits, democratically defined, and capable of containing their otherwise delirious, random and irrational expansion.
We are already living in disaster. Social inequalities continue to widen. Climate change, forest fires, floods, a global pandemic, rising methane levels: the signs of the crisis are growing.
The economic elite minimizes the danger, while buying bunkers to take refuge in, or dream of pursuing their dream of infinite accumulation on Mars. The oligarchy continues to choose profit before life and headlong rush rather than admitting the urgency of building a more democratic, egalitarian and greener society. As Hannah Arendt would say, she betrays youth by not providing them with an education to understand the world, since she only wants to adapt newcomers to the demands of production and to what serves her interests. However, it is precisely this logic at the base of the commodified school, of the school of a world subject to market logic, which has become untenable, which threatens to destroy the world and which must be overcome. This is something that 2012 was right about, which still remains profoundly true today, all with an urgency that is increased tenfold by the seriousness of the ecological problem. An 8% increase in university tuition fees will soon be announced, as a result of the indexation introduced by the PQ government of Pauline Marois. Could this be the call of another spring?
* Eric Martin is co-author of University Inc. (Lux)