If the coffee machine in the teachers’ room could give you a summary of the conversations collected here and there during the session, two observations would mark the results of this first face-to-face session at the college for over a year.
Note, what is said among teachers who sip their coffee before making their jump to class cannot compete in credibility with the learned analyzes produced by our education statisticians. In our educational institutions where we deal with success rates on the entrepreneurial model, where profitability is measured by the number of graduates, the conversations that animate around coffee machines do not weigh heavily in the balance. . And then, it is well known, coffee machines do not have a particularly well-developed sense of synthesis. So you will need some indulgence.
Ill-prepared students
Entering CEGEP and adapting to this new environment is usually a challenge for many students. This, for a greater proportion of them, has unfortunately proved to be an immeasurable challenge.
How can we grasp the richness of currents of thought in literature when we do not master the basics of the French language? How can one appreciate different schools of thought in philosophy if one does not differentiate between an opinion and an argument?
I had, in my classes, a greater number than ever of students who did not have the tools necessary for success. Being present in his classes other than just physically, taking notes, studying, revising before an exam, all these things that we took for granted, which were part of the “student’s job” seemed to me perfectly foreign to good. many of my first graders. Reluctantly, like some of my experienced colleagues, I have had to hand over numerous failures, something that many of my students are facing for the first time.
One of the striking observations is the growing gap between student performance. I would give you two copies and you would never believe me if I told you that they are students of the same class.
Also, in half of my groups, it is not the famous bell distribution curve that best represents the performance of my students, but rather a camel curve, thus revealing that a gap is widening between good students. and less well endowed academically. If education must embrace this mission of providing knowledge for everyone, if the objective of our schools is to work for the benefit of all, this situation is dramatic.
It is absolutely necessary to correct the shooting. The impression that emerges is that some students had discounted high school diplomas.
Some of our young adventurers of knowledge will also have, it seems to me, taken advantage of the pandemic and the largesse of this patented educational laboratory to offer themselves absolutely remarkable elements of general culture. The resilience of some of my students, their insight and their autonomy would leave you speechless. Some autodidacts, I swear, have toasted. Others, moreover, while waiting for their diploma to be delivered by magic, have, it seems to me, completely cut off from the world. The proportion of young people addicted to their screens is such that the very concept of cyber addiction can no longer be recognized as the social norm regarding our relationship to screens has evolved.
The question of interpersonal skills
I have always treated my students with deference and politeness. By effect of reciprocity, I have always been returned the same. I never took care to explain to my students that you don’t get up five minutes before the end of a class while a teacher is talking. I have never dwelled on the distinctions that exist between the way you frequent the corner store and a college class. During the next session, for the first time in 12 years, I will clarify. They apply to a very small minority of whom I really don’t want them. You don’t learn to live in society by eating cheese poop in boxers in a basement while listening to an online course. “Face-to-face” human relationships have been tainted and degraded by the culture (or its antithesis) which prevails in virtual worlds. A culture of instantaneity, a culture of zapping has taken over our classes.
If philosophy has something to do with this idea of general culture, with this project of shaping a good life, there is no time other than ours where it seems so necessary.