The discouragement of teachers does not date from yesterday but rather from the day before yesterday, at a time when health precautions in the face of the pandemic were far from being topical.
At the beginning of September 1984, Bernard Pivot devoted an issue of
Apostrophes
to the “
malaise of teachers
”.
This 75-minute program broadcast on Madelen is a lesson.
Discovering it or rediscovering it is a duty because it allows, alas, to note that the problems debated here 37 years have not been resolved, and remain more than ever, of a burning topicality.
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That evening, on the theme "
School is desperately looking for teachers
", Pivot gathered around him senior civil servants, journalists Patrick Rotman and Hervé Hamon, authors of a long investigation in colleges and high schools, as well as a teacher who was particularly publicized in the media. , Patrick Grainville . Literature teacher in a high school in Sartrouville, winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1976 for his 4th novel
Les flamboyants
, he continues to teach, out of passion. It represents an exception which does not confirm the rule, according to the other participants in the debate, starting with Dominique de La Martinière. Former Director General of Taxes, he has changed his universe and is now campaigning for controls that have nothing to do with taxation: those that are traditionally passed to students, in order to check their level. Noting a significant deterioration in primary and secondary education, fearing that some officials are committing a "
crime for not assisting children in danger
", he publishes an "
open letter to all parents who refuse the massacre of teaching
”.
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He thus set fire to the powder, since in the days following the broadcast of the program, the controversies multiplied in the press: would a significant part of the young people of our country be in the process of following studies which lead them directly to a hopeless path: almost permanent unemployment due to a lack of structural, but also cultural knowledge?
This is the first time that we have tackled this subject in depth, but not the last.
!
The problem of the lack of teachers is also addressed that evening: two and a half million hours of lessons are lost each year because of the absence of teachers, vaguely justified.
Their replacement turns into a puzzle.
The problem of recruitment is also topical. The increase in births, and therefore in pupils, has forced the National Education administration not to be too picky about the choice of applicants. Bac plus 2, or even less, is sometimes enough to be given a class in a so-called “
protected
” high school. These establishments are, in theory, sheltered from a new phenomenon: teachers heckled by pupils who are not content to skip school: in certain districts, the deterioration of classes and delinquency are indeed beginning to be part of everyday life.
On the set, we finally deplore the disappearance, in 1969, of the sixth grade entrance exam.
We form the hope that he will one day be restored.
In 2022, this is still not relevant.
But, as Pierre Dac said, as long as hope remains at the level of hope, there is no reason to despair.
