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If in many European countries schools are closed or partially open in order to slow the progression of the virus and especially of the new variant, the government wants to play the French exception card by keeping schools open at full capacity and thus continue to give pledges as long as possible to employers. However, according to INSERM data, today 1.4% of the English variant would be present in PCR tests and we should expect to see this variant become dominant by the end of February or the beginning of March, creating an uncontrollable situation for hospitals. There is therefore an urgent need to tackle the issue of managing the flow of students in schools, but the Ministry of Education and its leader Blanquer continue to stifle the problem, more concerned with maintaining their image that slow down the epidemic. The school “MEDEF daycare” or “the French exception”, government condescension for the lives of education workers and families is at its peak.
Blanquer during his intervention Tuesday on France Info announced the end of indoor EPS lessons and the vague possibility of duplicating the fourth and third classes on the college side, the effects of announcements to fill the decision-making vacuum. The one for whom one would not contaminate oneself at back-pedal school, therefore slightly in the speech. On the high school side, where the duplications have been made, they unfortunately put teachers and students in difficulty; the absence of adaptation of the programs, the lack of both human and material resources to fully realize these duplications, the maintenance of the baccalaureate at all costs and deadlines put exhaustion, stress and evaluations ahead of pedagogy and learning. A situation which, for teachers and high school students, results in situations of psychological distress that are still little highlighted.
The wait-and-see attitude of the ministry as the contamination rate increases, accelerated implementation of the Blanquer reforms, contradictory injunctions, weigh heavily on the morale of education workers who feel that the proposals they have formulated in the face of the crisis have been in vain.
Slowing down the epidemic requires urgently unblocking schools!
Already in November, faced with a criminal management of the crisis by the government, the teachers had sought from below to establish health protocols to match the situation, proposing the establishment of half-groups, adapting schedules, requiring human and material resources, the only conditions can even curb the epidemic by avoiding overloading and overloaded schools. Today the need is still the same, that of relieving congestion in establishments and adapting to the scientific data of new variants. There is a form of aberration to silence the situation of schools where the mixing is daily and where the staff fall ill. If it is the most precarious workers who are raising their heads in the sector during the last period, it is not by chance. In addition to the usual contempt, the AEDs face overloaded hotlines. Not enough numerous, not sufficiently trained, poorly paid, tired of being the “Swiss army knife” in the health situation, they multiply the days of strike and seek to organize themselves in the period around a legitimate anger.
The absurdity in this wait-and-see situation lies in the fact that there are empty hands looking for a job! What unoccupied spaces can accommodate students and offer them a cultural offer on half of their schedule for the setting up of half-groups there are! There is money to finance an adaptation of education to the health situation! Evidenced by the 2O billion aid to companies (which yet lay off workers and use the money to compensate for their shortfall and water the shareholders).
Faced with the possible scenario of total reconfinement, the need to adapt the school system
Almost a year from the start of the pandemic, the same mistakes are made again by the executive, unpreparedness, repression, surprises, announcements, punctuate the daily lives of workers. And the mantra remains the same: put the economy ahead of health and education.
The executive is working in its various scenarios on a generalized reconfinement and yet nothing seems to be emerging on the side of setting up the distance for education. The professors also keep a bitter memory of a first confinement tinged with contempt, between the innuendos that they did not work and that they were “strawberry” and the ordeal of a distancing who faced the fracture digital and the heavy task of re-adapting everything. Preparing for confinement on the education side would mean today massively distributing IT tools to families and teachers, training each other, adapting programs and pedagogy, designing interdisciplinary monitoring teams to maintain a social and educational link. with the students. In short, rethink pedagogy and learning, something that the Ministry of Education refuses to do since it refuses to leave education workers the space to jointly take their working tool into their own hands. and organize it. The ministry prefers to play the wait-and-see card and continue to bring down contradictory, inapplicable and exhausting directives.
Bottom-up management to get out of the crisis
If the sluggishness seems to reign on the professors side, it is the stunning effect of Blanquer’s policy that is the cause and yet he is on a ridge line, the days to come will have to be those of decisions. faced with the pandemic and whatever the scenario envisaged by the government, the sluggishness of teachers will not be able to continue. Reconfinement of the country except the schools where education workers would find themselves on the front line of the new variant or total reconfinement but without the means that would awaken the painful memory of the first confinement: the response of those who had warned, who had sought to slow down the he epidemic by proposing half-groups will be severe.
The Ministry of Education is therefore taking advantage of the lull to organize yet another failure for which it will have to foot the bill. And if the 26th, the date set by the inter-union to demand increases is being prepared timidly, it is because for the moment the fear and the protest have not yet been able to come together in order to put a brake on the government and organize by below those who have at heart to defend education. Education workers are the most able to build solutions to face the health crisis, there is no doubt that as long as the decisions remain taken by those who make this capitalist system, our lives will pass after their profits: So it’s up to us to raise our heads and impose the education and the world we want.
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