If there is one certainty in this world, it is that we can always count on professors of philosophy (and literature) to defend the sacrosanct general education at the college level. Thus, as soon as we propose, as the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) did last week, to rethink the model of general education in French-speaking CEGEPs, taking inspiration from the model of humanities specific to the English network, the rise to the barricades of the professorial lobby is not long in coming, as evidenced by the letter published on March 9 in The dutyand signed by some 800 people from the education sector.
It should be remembered that general education includes, in French-language colleges, four compulsory literature courses and three compulsory philosophy courses, whose skills to be achieved are the same for everyone. This is what would guarantee the common cultural fund dear to the defenders of this approach. In the Anglophone network, philosophy courses are replaced by courses in humanitieswhere each of the three compulsory courses comes in a multitude of proposals.
Students can thereby choose a course most likely to interest them among those offered by the college institution, and marked out by the ministerial estimate. In this sense, students are not “customer kings” who follow their narrow interests, since they are always subject to the imperative of developing a specific skill determined by the Ministry of Education.
One need only take a look at the enticing offer of courses in English-speaking CEGEPs to see that students are just as well equipped as their French-speaking colleagues, if not better, to understand the world, find their place in it and participate in democratic life. . For example, in the first lesson of humanitiesdedicated to knowledge in the broad sense, we will be introduced, if we wish, to critical or feminist thought, to the evolution of human rights, to Greek mythology or to various fields of philosophy, and the choice does not stop there (Dawson College).
And in the second course, which focuses on the conceptions of the world, you can deepen your knowledge of Christianity or other major religions, or those concerning ancient Greece, social criticism and utopias, or even the intellectual foundations of the Western tradition. , and so on (Champlain College). Nothing here that narrows the thought, nothing that threatens the “training of the mind” of these Cegep students, alas lost on the side of a basely liberal education.
It is true that such a model moves away from the objective of providing students with a common culture, which general education, in the French-speaking sector, would apparently be better able to provide. But it suffices to consult the lesson plans of philosophy professors to see how much their practices diverge. For there to be a common cultural fund, teachers should already agree on what constitutes it, in philosophy as in literature.
What are the essential authors, the essential ideas to teach, to transmit? Nobody agrees on that — and that’s fine — which results in courses sometimes at odds with each other. Philosophy courses are closer than is generally admitted to courses in humanities, except that the diversity here is restricted to a single field of knowledge, philosophy. And that French-speaking students do not know, before starting their session, what are the intellectual preferences of their professor or the orientation he intends to give to the course.
In short, philosophy courses in no way guarantee “entry into a common cultural and symbolic universe”. You can read Plato, Descartes, Rousseau and Kant, or not. One can learn about the foundations of morality or practice applied ethics. The first philosophy course can be devoted to the Greco-Latin heritage or have contemporary authors read. But, even if there was a greater unity, more overlaps between the current philosophy courses, compared to the courses of humanities, there would remain the question of motivation.
That of the teachers, first: at my college, there is often a lack of volunteers to give the 101, in addition to the winter session, because many equally demotivated students are taking the course for the second time. Greater latitude in the development of content could certainly motivate the troops and, who knows, enhance success.
It is obvious that offering some choice to students can have an impact on their motivation. Perhaps it is better to discover Martin Luther King and then want to read those who influenced him, such as Aeschylus and Sophocles. And if culture is transmitted, it is also shared. The individual who, motivated by what he learns, talks about it with his friends and family, thus participates in its transmission, its sustainability and its pooling. The greatest danger facing young people is disinterest and disengagement, withdrawal into oneself. Cultivating a taste for understanding the complexity of the world, arousing the love of knowledge, in all its forms, should be our absolute priority.