We are, for the most part, against the presence of the fast food in our school cafeterias. We would much prefer that students eat healthy food there. But shouldn’t we take a similar position when it comes to the currents of thought that are at the heart of the educational approaches used to nurture not the body, but the mind of our young people?
As Normand Baillargeon demonstrated so well in his essay Educational legends (Poètes de brousse), the most eccentric “theories”, with their beautiful promises and their simplistic or erroneous understanding of human nature, too often find fertile ground in our educational establishments. Let us think, for example, of the theory of multiple intelligences, or even that of learning styles which, even today, manage to charm, not to say put to sleep, the minds of many teachers, educational advisers or trainers who work in different faculties of education sciences.
My goal here is not to redo this criticism that the philosopher and essayist so well carried out in his book, but more modestly to focus on two expressions that are often found in the world of education.
Learn to learn
For several years now, we have no longer contented ourselves with asking students to learn—an activity that would be outdated—but rather to learn how to learn. Moreover, when I hear this expression, I want to reply to the person who makes it his mantra that he is satisfied with little. Why not take this metacognition exercise further by asking students not simply to learn to learn, but to learn to learn to learn, a formula which, as you can see, could go on forever.
Moreover, this approach is not so new. In his Emile or Education, Jean-Jacques Rousseau already proposed to be more concerned with the form of knowledge rather than its content: “You give science, at the right time; I take care of the proper instrument to acquire it”, he tells us; advice that has been retained by a pedagogy that still calls itself “new”.
The important thing, this tautological formula seems to mean, would not be so much in the content of the thought, that is to say the knowledge, knowledge or the acquisition of a solid culture, but rather in mechanics and the proper use of it, as if this thought could exist without this content.
However, in the same way that there can be no river without the water flowing through it, thought necessarily needs various knowledge, rich knowledge, chronological and spatial landmarks and a host of concepts. language skills in order to take shape, materialize and exist.
Moreover, with the entry into force of digital tools in our schools, the acquisition of rigorous knowledge and a rich general culture has lost the little relevance it had left with techno-pedagogues. “Why would students waste their time assimilating a phenomenal amount of dusty knowledge when they can now access it with a simple click on the Web when it becomes necessary and, above all, useful? they tell us.
Think outside the box…
After having evacuated the content, it remains to concentrate on the form of thought by teaching students to communicate, to express their opinions, to develop their critical sense and their creativity; as if all this could be done, one deludes oneself, from an ethereal world, or downright in the void.
After all, what society expects of these young aspiring citizens is to be able to adapt to the changing demands of the labor market, to be flexible and, above all, to be “innovative” in their way of dealing with problems. In short, they are expected to be able to “think outside the box”; an expression which, in my opinion, rings as false as the first one commented on in this text.
Because how can we imagine that we can think outside the box if we are totally unaware of what is inside it or, even worse, if this cranial box is completely empty?
Picasso took the time to study painting before becoming one of the greatest representatives of cubism. If the jazz musician manages to improvise so well, it is thanks to a musical technique that he has taken the time to master. To become a chess grandmaster, you must study thousands of games that others have played before you. Do not innovate who wants. Does not become original who does not take the trouble to lean on the tradition to know the different movements of thought.
Regardless of the size of his ego, each human being always remains the son of his time, the result of a history that preceded him. Anyone who stubbornly refuses to recognize these truisms condemns himself to repeating, despite his fine claims, what others have done or thought long before him.
The same is true with the young people who come into our education system. The development of critical thinking, creativity or metacognition, so celebrated by the new pedagogy, can only be acquired on the basis of solid knowledge, only from a rich general culture. Instead of skipping steps by stuffing them with ” fast food education, so let’s take the time to give them healthy, nutritious food for the mind that will help them later, throughout their lives, to develop these much-vaunted skills and beautiful qualities.