With the negotiations having begun, the fall promises to be hot in education, at the negotiating table and in the public. You don’t have to be Jeremiah to predict it.
Unmissable debates at the negotiating table
Unions will therefore, rightly, ask themselves what measures it is desirable to take to be heard. To stay in the news, is it a good idea or not to boycott cultural outings? Should we go on strike? When ? In what form ?
There will be a lot of debate about teachers’ salaries and their working conditions. The delicate and very heavy issue of students who have behavioral or learning problems will be inevitable, like that of dropping out of school. We will undoubtedly also discuss the state of disrepair of too many of our schools and, a divisive subject if there ever was one, wonder how to train these teachers who are lacking in such large numbers.
We are going to talk about school financing and we can assume that private school financing will be debated. The question of secularism could well also be found in the landscape, in particular for its implementation, or not, everywhere in our schools. And many more.
Autumn therefore promises to be hot in education. But, in view of what we are already observing and in view of what we can assume is coming, I cannot help but think of a man who was walking in Athens a long time ago.
Did you say “education”?
In the public square, this man approached people by simply asking them to tell him the meaning of a word which, by the profession they exercised, they must certainly be able to define.
You, general, must be able to tell me, an ignorant person, what courage is? You, a seasoned politician, will certainly be able to explain to the ignorant person that I am what justice is. And so on.
You have recognized it: it is Socrates, who thereby contributed, undoubtedly more than anyone, to the birth of philosophy.
A question then immediately comes to mind in view of the negotiations which are beginning and what we are going to debate there – or worse: to hide and not debate. This question is very simple: what idea of education, what ideal of education do we defend collectively and what are the means that we are willing to implement to achieve it as best as we can?
Teachers’ salaries and working conditions largely depend on the answers to these questions, as does their training. The curriculum and everything that happens at school are intimately linked to it, as are the secularism of the school system and the existence, or not, of subsidized private schools.
Very different answers can be given to this vast question of defining education. The word “education” is indeed one of those concepts which are by nature debatable and debated and about which reasonable people can have different conceptions.
For my part, I think that education is essentially the transmission to newcomers to the world of carefully selected knowledge – that by which humanity has best managed to understand itself and to understand the world – and the development of virtues that they bring into existence. Education thus contributes to the construction of the autonomy of the subject, to the training of citizens and to the exercise of a profession armed with all of this.
I think indoctrination is a serious danger that threatens this ideal. I maintain that secularism is essential. I think that equality of opportunity must guide our choices, particularly for the allocation of resources. I think there is evidence on some specific issues that we need to consider, and I agree that the research that produces it is not the only research that can enlighten us.
There is so much to say…
But it follows that education is one of the most vital and important institutions of a democratic society and that teachers play a central role in making it happen — my dear Russell called them the guardians of civilization. It also follows that their training should be very demanding and, wherever possible, based on the best established scientific knowledge.
You can of course disagree with me. But you understand: what follows from the idea we have of education is very concrete things about everything that will be said and debated this fall.
To conduct these debates calmly and lucidly, it would therefore be desirable to have and be able to invoke the clearest and most consensual vision possible of what education is. Socrates questioned people. It is all of us collectively that we must question.
In the absence of such a vision, we risk, once again, seeing debates resolved by a balance of power between different, even irreducible, conceptions, very often carried by factions or interest groups.
In the absence of great collective reflection on what education is, a reflection that we are not carrying out although it has been necessary for too long already, this is what risks happening this time again.
Doctor of philosophy, doctor of education and columnist, Normand Baillargeon has written, directed or translated and edited more than seventy works.