Normand Baillargeon is a rare bird in the Quebec intellectual landscape. This free spirit, philosopher of education, pleads for nuance in a world of polarization. He even recommends listening to people who don’t think like us to try to draw valid ideas from them.
“I’ve spent my life reading people I disagree with, and I’ve learned things from them,” says the one who just launched A philosopher at schoola collection of chronicles selected from those published in The duty since 2019.
“I’ve studied enough to see that, very often, we can give points to people who don’t think like us. We don’t have to classify people between the good guys and the bad guys. I refuse these categorisations,” he adds.
This intellectual, who holds two doctorates (in education and in philosophy), delivers through his writings a humanist vision of education. “The school must train free beings”, “enlightened citizens” capable of taking a critical look at society, believes the philosopher.
For this, the school must also teach the art of discussion and serene debate, argues the essayist. For these reasons, he applauded the new version of the Culture and Citizenship of Quebec course, which replaces Ethics and Religious Culture. This supporter of the secularism of the state believes that learning citizenship will have greater value than learning religions.
Baillargeon describes himself as a “rationalist whose ideas are deeply rooted in the Age of Enlightenment”. He cites a recent interview, given to a French publisher, in which he says he feels “very close to people like David Hume, Condorcet or Bertrand Russell — and, for the same reasons as Kropotkin, in the history of anarchism.”
His conception of education is part of a long tradition, which goes back to Plato and which is embodied in analytical philosophy, little known in the French-speaking world. “We come out of the cave, we access knowledge, we see the world as it is. For me, education is access to fundamental knowledge: mathematics, science, philosophy, literature, the arts,” he says.
I tend to adopt the same attitude as when the Internet arrived in schools: you must not be technophobic or technophile.
The era was so polarizing that the art of rhetoric, like learning about democratic institutions, is now part of this important knowledge for Normand Baillargeon. He also proposes to put on the program “socio-emotional learning or the art of knowing oneself, understanding and controlling one’s emotions”.
ideological battles
He believes that the presence of “dogmatic discourses like constructivism in the university” plays an “important role” in the current climate of suspicion and ideological clashes. He also points the finger at social networks for the exacerbated polarization.
The faculties of education are not immune to the ideological battles that divide the rest of society. Normand Baillargeon deplores the socio-constructivism that reigned for a long time among his former colleagues in the sciences of education. This makes him say that “the training that has been offered in the faculties of education in Quebec is not up to par. Teachers, too often, are poorly trained”.
He deplores the lack of importance given to evidence in education. He claims to have met people in higher education who are unaware of the existence of the Follow Through project, the largest research on education in American history. Conducted between 1968 and 1977, this initiative compared the effectiveness of teaching methods with disadvantaged students.
The explicit teaching method (direct instruction) “trumps all the others on all fronts,” underlines Normand Baillargeon. Teaching in education in Quebec for thirty years has not been entirely inspired by surveys like Follow Through, deplores the philosopher.
“Guardians of Civilization”
He sees censorship and cancel culture as symptoms of educational abuse. Indoctrination and propaganda are real dangers on campuses, he said.
He quotes his “dear Bertrand Russell”, whom he describes as the greatest philosopher of the XXe century, which spoke of teachers as “guardians of civilization”. Ambitious program. Teachers are arguably the biggest success factor for students. We all know someone who tells how much a teacher gave him the sting of surpassing oneself.
“It’s hard to get out of the cave to discover the world and sometimes it’s possible because someone helps you out. The taste for effort, it is cultivated, we do not have it instantly, ”says Normand Baillargeon.
He’s a bit skeptical of the rise of ChatGPT and other “smart” apps, but resists the temptation to dismiss everything. “In my opinion, this is something huge. It will change everything. But I tend to adopt the same attitude as when the Internet arrived in schools: you shouldn’t be technophobic or technophile. »