A thunderclap has just sounded in education, more specifically in college education.
The starting point was the request made by the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) to review this general education (1993 version) that all students attending this establishment must take. It includes compulsory courses in philosophy, literature, second language and physical education.
According to the FECQ, which bases its assertion on a survey, this training would be considered “uninteresting” or even “flat” by 53% of those who follow it. It’s not nothing ! We should of course look closely at this survey, but the story is a priori disturbing.
The FECQ asks, on the one hand, that we rethink general education to take into account what is new and unprecedented in the world in which we live at the moment, which is certainly very different from that of 1993; on the other hand, that we allow, on the model of what is done with humanities in English-language colleges, that students can choose from a wide variety of courses what appeals to them, rather than being assigned to a single model.
The reactions were quick. More than 800 people from the education community sharply criticized the clientelism of this proposal, among other things, and above all recalled that this general education, rooted in history and tradition, is essential for thinking about the current world, and all the more that the professors who give it precisely make it their duty to allow students to think it along with it.
What do you think of all this?
I’ve spent my life teaching general education courses—more specifically, philosophy courses in CEGEP, then philosophy of education courses at university.
I am deeply convinced of the importance of this training, and not only in philosophy of course. It is essential to enable the youngest, in turn, to think about the world and to act in it: it has a fundamental role to play in the formation of citizens of a democratic society.
On the other hand, the idea of à la carte training, of training with content essentially decided by the students, and centered on the current world and its challenges and based on it, seems to me a serious error.
I would add another argument in favor of the general education that we wanted to offer at CEGEP (call it classic or traditional): it provides access to pleasures, to joys that will accompany those who enjoy them and love them for the rest of their lives.
Saying all this, I also know what threatens this ideal.
To begin with, these courses can indeed, if the heart, if the knowledge, if the passion of whoever gives them are lacking, be… “boring”. Showing the relevance, the topicality, the importance of the thought of those who lived, wrote, thought, created centuries, even millennia ago, requires great pedagogical qualities. It could be that shortcomings in this area explain part of the very negative reaction of some of the recipients of these teachings. It’s to do.
Second, these courses can have an indoctrinating effect. Let’s stay in the news. Imagine a philosophy class. We talked about politics and read Plato, Dewey, Rawls and others to think about the question of justice. The teacher updates the subject by talking about intersectionality.
If students are not given the arguments advanced by the defenders of this idea and the arguments advanced by those who contest it, we have failed in the crucial purpose of enabling students to develop their thinking and prepare themselves to be citizens in full-fledged, possessing knowledge and also virtues, the ability to discuss, to listen to other points of view and to live in a world where the policies adopted are not always those we would like. None of this seems possible to me without the transmission to all of a rich cultural background.
Once again, it is for these reasons that I absolutely cannot wish that we adopt the anglophone model.
What to do then? Good news: a committee would work on this.
two wishes
I would like him to do two things.
First, a serious examination of precisely what is being done in these courses across the province and a reliable and valid assessment of what its recipients learn, think and derive from them.
Then, a real reflection on this training and its updating. This must be done, in my opinion, by a tighter definition of the content of these courses, with a list of obligatory readings, concepts, ideas, texts, which are also obligatory and carefully specified, as should also be links to this knowledge. and of this tradition with what our world has.
Let’s see this episode as a great opportunity to reaffirm an educational ideal specific to French-speaking Quebec, an ideal that is based on an ambition of cultural transmission and that nourishes a vision of citizenship. Let’s see it as a great opportunity to ask ourselves what, if anything, is problematic in its realization; and better specify what needs to be transmitted, and why.
Doctor of philosophy, doctor of education and columnist, Normand Baillargeon has written, directed or translated and edited more than seventy works.