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What is the perversion of the school system?
The school buys the effort of learning with the promise of a higher future social status.
She doesn't learn to deal with problems.
School therefore inculcates the notion of caste.
The two dimensions of education
A complete education involves learning:
The school deals almost exclusively from the first point, and it is in families, as well as in the playground of schools, colleges and high schools, that children learn, on their own, to manage groups.
In other words, school courses are almost exclusively aimed at producing 'a very full head' in the sense of Montaigne. More specifically, the school tends to have an atrophied vision of what is a well -made head ', which is reduced to the ability to produce a pseudo reasoning (for example a construction of the thesis, antithesis, synthesis) instead of simply restoring knowledge, and which thus excludes the dimension to be able to work effectively in groups (that is to say, practice problem solving).
The republican school and the social elevator
The republican school has claimed that its caste system has become more just since 'everyone has the same chances'. This has two major biases:
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How is having intellectual abilities a less unfair mode of selection of the privileged than simple birth under the old regime?
In this sense, receiving poor grades can be seen as an oppressive conditioning system aimed at getting the individual to accept their future disadvantaged social status.
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It is largely the family social network that determines an individual's success.
The American model of the 'self-made man' is the exception put forward to hide the statistically significant reality.
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La complainte du professeur
« Aujourd'hui les élèves sont nuls, et pas intéressés »
C'est normal, ils sont cohérents.
Par défaut, un enfant normal cherche le statut social.
Obtenir un bon statut social ne nécessite pas de solides connaissances, juste éventuellement des bonnes notes pour pouvoir accéder aux écoles prestigieuses. L'enfant est donc éventuellement intéressé par la bonne note, pas par les connaissances. Une fois qu'il est convaincu que la bonne note lui est inaccessible, il n'est plus intéressé du tout.
Donner envi à l'enfant d'apprendre (au delà de la motivation naturelle chez les petits enfants que nous évoquerons plus loin au niveau des pédagogies alternatives) suppose de suivre le long parcours préparatoire suivant :
1. Convaincre que la paix sociale (vivre entouré de gens avec qui l'on se sent bien) vaut mieux que l'ambition sociale et la violence sociale qu'elle génère immanquablement.
2. Convaincre que la paix sociale s'obtient via la pratique de la résolution de problèmes, et la prise en compte des faits.
3. Prendre conscience que la partie analyse de la résolution de problèmes nécessite de solides connaissances.
Alternative pedagogies
Frenet and Montessori schools aim to develop an aspect of our Cognitivo-affective system, à savoir l'instinct d'expérimentation spontanée. Freinet met en plus l'accent sur la coopération. Il ne s'agit cependant que d'un embryon de ce que nous préconisons à la question 'What is a successful education?'. Indeed, group work remains linked to a Idealized vision of humans qui ne prend pas en compte l'ambition sociale et la dissonance cognitive, donc fonctionne correctement uniquement avec les enfants petits.
A satisfactory education system
... should ensure that every baccalaureate:
1) masters the four stages of problem solving method, and is sufficiently trained in practicing it to be able to do it informally in pairs,
2) understands and respects the difference between a scientifically established fact and a simple belief.
It is clear that today the majority of people who have completed a complete course (known as BAC 5) do not correctly master these two points.
Point 1 means that the individual has become efficient at working in a group.
Point 2 means that the individual knows how to sort out knowledge and charlatanism, and therefore can acquire additional solid knowledge if necessary, by his own means.
This point 2 also means that the individual will have a greater respect for facts, and in this sense will be a better citizen.
However, at this point 2 we tend to replace that to exercise this or that profession, it is necessary to have this or that diploma, which guarantees more or less that the individual has the desired knowledge, without necessarily being able to assess their solidity. We thus bypass the problem, which has the dangerous effect, in particular in democracy, that citizens remain individuals easily manipulable by the media of opinion and social networks.
Methodology
Many people have thought deeply about the purposes of school, as well as educational methods. However, it seems to us that the particularity of the school question is that as soon as we approach it directly, we lack support to respond to it in a non-ideological way. On this site, it was only after answering all the other questions that the satisfactory education system became obvious to us.
Go deeper
Refer to question 'What is a successful education?' which deals with the broader subject of education, of which the school system is only one modality. Everything that is said about the question of education is applicable to the school system. Simply, in dealing with the present question of the school system, we have decided to concentrate on highlighting its fundamental contradictions at the level of motivations and values.
Also refer to the question 'What conditions must be met to produce serious reasoning? Problem solving.' for a more precise presentation of what problem solving is, and to the question 'What is the modern scientific method?' to understand the difference between science and beliefs.
↣ Wikipedia article regarding social mobility
Article in English