The vast majority of those who work in the world of education affirm it: like our health system, our education system is sick. All the Ministers of Education who have succeeded in recent years have tried to alleviate the symptoms by applying here and there a few bandages according to the urgency of the moment, but none has even tried to assess the patient to draw a clear and complete diagnosis.
And that is understandable. When he is thrown into the fray, the new Minister of Education finds himself at the head of an octopus with a thousand tentacles, he must read several notebooks of ” briefing » bulkier than the Bible of Gutenberg, responding to emergencies, reacting to current events, being present in the National Assembly, in one’s constituency and, of course, “going into the field”, a time-honored expression which, sometimes, can be used as a headlong rush or outlet, just to breathe a little…
But one day we will have to look seriously at the patient who has been dying before our eyes for so many years in order to prescribe him a medication that will be able to put him back on his feet. Caught in the turmoil, nose glued to the glass, hands in the grease and involved in what needs to be examined, it seems obvious to me that the Ministry of Education and its new minister, Bernard Drainville, will not be able, despite all their good will, to carry out such a titanic task.
All that remains is to appeal to a committee of wise men and women who, on the basis of their knowledge and their experiences, will take the time, far from the tumult and also from the cameras, to consult the various actors of the network of the education, civil society and the population in general to feed their reflections before formulating a set of recommendations which will allow to breathe new life into an education system under artificial respirator.
What is the human being?
If I qualify as “wise” these people whom the government could call on, it is because I expect them to be intellectually and politically free, to have strong values and a vision of education which, itself, will be based on a well-defined conception of the human being. Because there is no escaping it: thinking about education can only be done, sometimes even unbeknownst to some, on the basis of a set of values to which we adhere and only from the response that the we give to the existential question par excellence: what is the human being?
For example, someone who affirms that, long before being a thinking and rational being, the human being, therefore the student, is a living organism inhabited and crossed by emotions, impulses and fundamental needs, will tend to promote measures that will promote the physical and psychological health of these young people, to ensure that a healthy mind can flourish in a healthy body.
The one who subscribes to the idea that the human being, therefore the pupil, is fundamentally a sociable animal which can only develop harmoniously surrounded by his fellows, young people like him, but especially adults who will serve him as models and smugglers, will probably tend to promote a pedagogy that promotes human relationships in the flesh, while being very critical of distance schooling or all-digital education.
Those who conceive that “human beings are by nature cultural beings” will favor an education system not centered on life skills, the development of skills and pedagogy by project, but rather on the transmission of a rich cultural heritage that will allow future adults and citizens who are the students to develop a broader thought and to better know the world in which they have been thrown in order to then be able to transform it.
Anyone who espouses the idea that freedom is not given to human beings, but is rather the fruit of an endless quest, will be inclined, not to respond to the tastes, expectations and interests of child by presupposing that he alone knows what he wants, but will rather give himself the objective of rushing him into his certainties, his prejudices and his habits, to get him out of his tribe or his cozy cocoon so that he can access the universal, which is the complete opposite of a thought folded in on itself.
End DIY
By reading the preceding lines, you can of course see what my conception of the human being may look like as well as the pedagogy that I advocate. Of course, I am aware that this is just one vision among others. However, if I have presented these few postulates to you, it is to illustrate the substantive debates that can arise when one begins to seriously question the ends pursued in education as well as the means used.
Over the past few decades, ministers of education, like gusts of wind rushing through a revolving door, have come and gone. Everyone tried, as best they could, to leave their mark using a set of scoops, but it was a waste of time. While some of them proved necessary, several were the result of political orders, came out of nowhere or were decreed without relying on a clear vision of education and even less on science or data. convincing.
And then, asking his Minister of Education to work on the shortage of teachers and the renovation of schools as a priority, as Premier Legault did during his inaugural speech for the session, is not what could be called a ‘vision’.
Collectively, let’s end the era of tinkering, patching and tinkering in education. If bandaging our system is good, rethinking it will help us to treat it better, but above all to restore it to health. This is the heritage that we should be keen to pass on to the younger generations.