In the “Report of the committee of experts on the mastery of French at college”, the authors note the difficulties of college students in written French and propose that the quotes for literature courses be reviewed in order to make more room for the language teaching and text revision strategies, including the effective use of text correction software such as Antidote.
Once again, the recommendations of this report shift the burden of teaching and evaluating written language to the heart of the Literature discipline, whose primary mandate, at the college level, should be to work on understanding specialized texts and writing rules specific to the different types of speech (informative, expressive and argumentative) that students do not distinguish and which are partly responsible for the rise of mass misinformation.
To tell the truth, it is surprising that this expert report once again misses the real problem of written French, that is to say that it is often only evaluated in French courses from primary to college, because of the workload that its correction imposes or the feeling of imposture evoked by certain teachers of other disciplines who candidly admit not to master the rules.
How are these experts not indignant at the social failure of the non-mastery of the basic rules of written French in college, both by students and by certain teachers of specific programs? This is, in my opinion, the first aberration of this report: if the shortcomings in written French are detrimental to the success of students in their program, why only assess their mastery in French? Shouldn’t language assessment be mandatory in all disciplines, from primary to college?
In this sense, I worked for three years as an Antidote respondent in my college to assist volunteer teachers from all disciplines in a common effort to promote the language. With all due respect to all the detractors of corrective software who see it as a crutch, if this crutch gives the feeling of competence necessary to teachers and students to correct their work, I see in it a solution to a systemic problem which, if it was applied in all their courses, would allow in the medium term an improvement of the language.
Because Antidote does not correct the students’ text for them: it highlights possible errors and reminds its users of the rules it lacks, in addition to bringing together all the dictionaries and grammars on the same platform. We should stop speaking out against its use without knowing what we are talking about.
At the end of these three years of experimentation, the main resistance of teachers to the corrective software is the heaviness of the logistics involved in its use. The lack of computer labs and especially of technical support, forcing teachers to turn into technicians, overcomes the determination of the most convinced. Furthermore, the cost of the Druide patch, which is comparable to that of the entire Office suite, is a significant issue.
Are there financial measures that will allow the network to train staff, ensure updates, provide computer equipment and technical support in the classroom? And who will pay for Antidote? The Ministry ? Middle School ? Students ? Obviously, the report does not question the practicability of its recommendations.
Another reluctance towards the teaching of Antidote by Literature teachers: the context of carrying out the handwritten uniform French test (EUF) (which certainly does not help its success). Is there a real desire to take it online? If yes, when? Do we have the laboratories and the technical support to make it pass to everyone at the same time? Asking that literature courses work on self-correction on the computer while the test that measures graduates’ language proficiency remains handwritten is another aberration of the report of the committee of experts.
In closing, in the era of inclusive pedagogy, where disciplinary practices are encouraged such as the student’s choice to produce narrated slideshows, concept maps or individual interviews for his final test, we limit the field of writes in general education disciplines, thus contributing to making them less appreciated and less appreciated courses in a system where it is no longer the subject that is at the center of teaching, but the student.
However, the school is not an algorithm: it is high time that it stopped making up for the shortcomings of its leveling down and forced the citizens of tomorrow to come out of their echo chamber, by reading something other than current texts related to their field of study.