The disaster reported by the press concerning the level of spelling of certain CEGEP students only reflects, alas, part of the difficulties encountered by this educational institution. The truth is that the general organization of the Cégep no longer corresponds to the students we welcome today.
For if the mistakes of a disturbing number of pupils transgress the rules formerly acquired in primary school, the writing of other pupils is not only impeccable in its form, but also rigorous and remarkable in its content. However, the way in which general education is organized implies that all these students are in the same classes, with the same courses and the same exams. From then on, either the corrector multiplies the failures unreasonably, or he madly reduces the gap between the notes to limit the failures, or he stands in an artificial and inconsistent in-between.
What is true for the results is true for the courses themselves. Offering the same literature or philosophy course to pupils who enjoy genuine literary fluency and to pupils who still have trouble understanding a simple text and writing a syntactically correct sentence raises, depending on whether one addresses mainly to one or the other, either numerous abandonments, or boredom, if not despondency.
A certain heterogeneity in the level of the pupils is of course inevitable, but the current situation of the school is today, for reasons too long to analyze, so degraded that this heterogeneity has now reached a critical threshold. General education as it exists at CEGEP is no longer viable. If we allow this situation to continue without vigorous reform, we will continue our descent into an increasingly empty, arbitrary and anarchic education.
We can only resuscitate the CEGEP by distributing students in general education according to their program, thus restoring a certain homogeneity. It is hypocritical to consider that by putting very fragile pupils on the academic level with, for example, pupils of the natural sciences, one stimulates the former. The truth is that they are discouraged and many drop out of the first course in literature or philosophy. The distribution of students according to their program would not eliminate the heterogeneity of levels, it would attenuate it enough to revive a dying education.
Courses and requirements could then be adapted to the level of the students. We don’t teach in the same way and we don’t lead to the same point students who have not been used to making an effort and who leave with deep shortcomings and students who, having used work regularly, read and write with relative ease. We don’t do the same courses, we don’t give the same exercises or the same exams, we don’t have the same objectives. We seek to advance the former to a reasonable threshold, we push the latter as far as possible in excellence.
We would thus obtain what is generally considered irreconcilable: we would increase the number of graduates while aiming for excellence. The CEGEP would again become attractive for young people and the number of dropouts would be reduced.
Such a reform would be an opportunity for general education to look, for once, in the mirror without complacency. Because there is no doubt that the teaching of, for example, philosophy can be considerably improved. We would already be taking a big step by recognizing that it is ridiculous to try to imitate university education with students from secondary school, most of whom are not destined for higher studies in philosophy. What we can reasonably aim for all is a common culture thanks to which the pupils acquire what Bachelard called “the sense of the problem”.
This “common” would be more extensive and more in-depth for some, but it would not be amputated from the essential for others. All the pupils would have the right to a truly general education, that is to say based on the great literary and philosophical texts of the tradition. Such training would be more coherent without being uniform, since the whole art of teaching consists in bringing to life the great authors freely chosen, not by passing them through in single file, but by constructing a course at the both personal and original, that is to say a real lesson.
Nothing would, of course, prevent students in the natural sciences program from tackling the philosophy of science in a more focused fashion, with students in the humanities from emphasizing political philosophy or with students in “design” or “music”, to deepen the philosophy of art. There would be new possibilities.
But there is a prerequisite: we must get out of our lethargy and want.