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"To restore confidence in school, let's defend family education"

2021-06-04T20:05:43.612Z


FIGAROVOX / TRIBUNE - A draft report from the Council of State concluded that the controversial article of the “separatism” bill on family education was unconstitutional, before retracting. For Marie Girard, professor in preparatory classes, if the article was reintroduced, ...


Marie Girard is a preparatory class teacher and member of the national office of Action & Démocratie.

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Many parents and parents' associations have expressed their disagreement and concern with article 21 of the bill confirming respect for the principles of the Republic. This article modifies article L131 of the Education Code by restricting the possibility of family education. The essential argument of these families was based on the fundamental freedom of parents in matters of education and reiterated Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "

Parents have, as a priority, the right to choose the kind of child. education to give to their children

". This argument has all its value and its place in the debate. But it seems essential that this provision, inscribed in law for nearly a century and a half, be defended by teachers in the very name of their profession in order to defend the school itself.

A first version of this article 21 had been voted in the National Assembly on first reading making family education derogatory and subject to authorization. This article had been deleted by the Senate. The Council of State itself had expressed reservations about its constitutionality. It has been rewritten with a view to being discussed and voted on at second reading in the National Assembly: it seems to be taking shape that family education would be left with its current declarative regime, but with an extremely significant accentuation of the control of the state over families. Why would it be necessary

a priori

be wary of the good intentions and know-how of families in matters of education?

It is also legitimate to wonder whether Article 21 as drafted to date still fully respects the full freedom of education that parents intend to give to their children.

But beyond the question of individual freedom, it is the future of the school itself that is at stake when we speak of compulsory education.

As teachers, we want to defend the idea that the school institution can only be a place of learning if the students, themselves or through the voice of their parents, are able to freely consent to the inherent rules. to any institution.

This bill constitutes one of these stages in the drift of National Education which consists in imposing itself as the only possible place of instruction.

Marie Girard

We want to say loud and clear that no learning, in any discipline whatsoever, can be done under systemic constraint. Our job is to give our students a sense and taste for reflection and this cannot be done without their deep support. Strangely, National Education is in the process of giving up being the place of intelligence and the exercise of critical thinking. From now on, the school has become the place where we instill in young people “civic and ecological” practices which everyone blindly obeys. The teachers are in the process of becoming the agents of a school which, renouncing its emancipatory purpose, imposes an arbitrary orthopraxy on the population.

Let us only recall that, when the obligation to educate was recorded in the law of March 28, 1882, it was largely a question of protecting children and their families from the propensity of certain employers to use labor. low-cost children's work. Today, on the contrary, the school is struggling to be accepted by a population that is every day more suspicious and more contemptuous, and for that, deploys methods every day more demagogic. Many professors are resigning. Some families seek to avoid enrolling their children in the school in their area to protect them. Some pupils still destabilize the institution from the inside by unacceptable behavior.

We know that this bill constitutes one of these stages in the drift of National Education which consists in establishing itself as the only possible place of instruction. Since the reform of the lycée, it has become almost impossible in practice, for a pupil of an establishment without contract, a pupil of the CNED or a pupil free candidate, to take the baccalaureate. Indeed, to obtain this diploma, it is no longer a question of showing a certain academic level but of showing its ability to pass under the caudine forks of ministerial decrees, continuous monitoring and the latest educational findings of the moment. Faced with this drift, we, teachers, responsible for evaluating our students for the baccalaureate,must face the intimidation of certain families whose only mitigating circumstance is the anguish they feel at seeing their children not being recognized by the school system.

Families are deprived of their fundamental freedom of education and instruction.

This makes them by nature tyrannical since now captives, they have the right to demand from the school the unconditional success of their children.

Marie Girard

Having become unavoidable, the National Education is prevented from definitively dismissing a pupil regardless of the extravagance of his behavior, in the name of "

educational continuity during each cycle and throughout schooling

" included in the Education Code. In the spring, therefore, at the discretion of the disciplinary councils, the neighboring establishments exchange students who, by their behavior, radically mark their contempt for the school. Heads of establishment, supervisory staff, teachers, are faced with an insoluble equation: endure unacceptable behavior while allowing the silent majority of our students to continue to painfully study.

There is a notable paradox.

Families are deprived of their fundamental freedom of education and instruction.

This makes them by nature tyrannical since now captives, they have the right to demand from the school the unconditional success of their children.

In short, the school is in the process of suffocating in the nets of compulsory schooling more or less clearly enshrined in the law, but validated in fact and in the conscience.

We, teachers, are prisoners of this school as omnipotent as it is impotent.

This change in the conditions of family education only puts a deadly end to this drift from which we all suffer, teachers and students.

We therefore refuse to bear the weight of a school which is forced to give guarantees of acceptability to students and their parents.

We therefore refuse to wrest from our students, by any means whatsoever, in particular by lying, their consent to an orientation which has chosen only the name.

Let these two modes of instruction support each other.

We will thus find our way back to a school where parents will entrust us with their children with a cheerful disposition.

Marie Girard

We also want to say how fragile the teacher-student pedagogical relationship is. We do not often say enough about the teacher's extreme dependence on his pupil, from whom he claims the act of thinking, and which no method can mechanically provoke. This intrinsic fragility of the teacher can only be overcome by the positively accepted presence of the pupil in the classroom. The authority of the teacher associated with the consent of the student are the essential ingredients of a teacher-student relationship worthy of the name. Without them, we simultaneously fall into tyranny and demagoguery.

Also, family education should not be considered as a stopgap to compensate for school failures, or as a competitor of the educational institution. On the contrary, let these two modes of instruction support each other. We will thus find our way back to a school where parents will entrust us with their children with a cheerful disposition. We will find our way back to a school where children and their families will show this desire to learn, which is essential for learning.

We call for a school that would give public opinion a more modest image of itself: the school must give up pretending that it is capable of dealing with all the shortcomings of society. To train young people, to supervise them, to stimulate them, such is the essential goal with which the school must resume if it does not want to sink. It is within this strictly limited framework that the school will finally be able to give society the best of itself.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-06-04

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