Réfome of school time and the baccalaureate, co-education, recruitment of teachers… Sociologist specializing in education and social inequalities, author of several reference works including the manual school sociology (ed. Armin Collin), Marie Duru-Bellat carefully read Emmanuel Macron’s proposals, who, in his interview with the Point, says he wants to make the recovery of National Education an absolute priority. She answers it here… and tackles, in passing, the teacher and essayist Jean-Paul Brighelli, who denounces the bankruptcy of the school system and the lack of ambition of the president in this area.
Point : What do you think of Emmanuel Macron’s wish to shorten the holidays for the students most in difficulty?
Marie Duru-Bellat: In France, the summer holidays are indeed very long. Students may forget things during this time and restarting will be more difficult. Therefore, the idea of shortening them is not bad in itself, even if teachers may be reluctant to reduce their number of holidays. There is a problem, which private Acadomia-type pharmacies take advantage of, which make revisions to children… which not all parents can afford. But how to implement this policy? How to designate students in difficulty and tell them that they will have ten days less vacation? Which schools will apply this measure? The parents will not necessarily all follow. Neither do the teachers.
What should be done, then, to recover this school time?
Resume it in June: some children have already stopped following the program. Have all students return home a week earlier. Organize different revisions, where the more and less advanced will not have the same activities. All pupils and teachers must have the same length of vacation. So recovering school time, yes, of course, we could take a few days off All Saints’ Day or the major holidays, but for everyone, even if it means organizing different activities within the school.
READ ALSOSchool: “Above all, there are too many short holidays! »
The president still defends the single college…
Obviously. How else? Sorting the children, but from what age? They would be penalized. The single college model is European. Nobody will go back on the latter, at the risk of getting sidelined in Europe. Why is the single college experiencing difficulties? Because children have not necessarily acquired all the necessary basics when they enter it. We must therefore fight against early school failure. And then selecting students too early does not have many advantages. Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to put students in apprenticeship from the age of 14, employers did not follow. They are too young, not trained enough.
The essayist Jean-Paul Brighelli considers, in Point, that Macron “is 20 years behind in education” and that it is precisely necessary to put an end to the single colleague, who lowers the general level of the pupils. What do you think ?
What do we offer for children aged twelve, thirteen? Jean-Paul Brighelli is not a researcher but a polemical philosopher who hardly knows these questions. It is certain that in college students display heterogeneous levels. Teachers may need to adapt the level for an average student. Is that bad ? The good ones will have time to be good, they will stay at school for a long time then at the university or in preparatory classes, why this requirement of absolute precocity? Students can progress more slowly, but together.
Emmanuel Macron says he wants to put an end to the hypocrisy of 80% of a baccalaureate age group, “because a third of our high school students are in vocational high school”…
This figure of 80% comes from a European requirement. Without the bac pro, we would never have reached it. The researchers also observed that more and more young people went through the professional baccalaureate, went to BTS, then joined a master’s degree. The professional baccalaureate can therefore well be an alternative sector, even though it is much less considered in our country than the general sectors. In France, we develop long studies without questioning what the students learn, what they experience. We are satisfied with indicators. We have goals, we are happy to achieve them, one in two young people is now in higher education. But when we look at the knowledge of the pupils, thanks in particular to the Pisa surveys, it’s a different story… We lack requirements in terms of evaluation.
READ ALSOEmmanuel Macron: “The president is right to want to put republican values back at the heart of the school”
The teaching profession struggles to recruit, to seduce, why?
In all countries, there is a shortage of teachers. This poses a larger problem, that of the motivation of young people. We lack nurses, childcare workers, doctors… and teachers. None of the professions that require contact with others attracts. It’s not just a matter of salary, the job itself has lost its attractiveness. Perhaps we should not immediately place inexperienced teachers in difficult schools at the start of their careers? We also know of training problems: pedagogy and psychology are not sufficiently taken into account.
READ ALSOEmmanuel Macron: “There are too many vacations and too busy days”
Well-being is not a secondary issue, except in France, where teachers have little training in dealing with young people. The math teacher is a mathematician, the history teacher a historian. So dealing with the problems of adolescents… Who cares about their education as a whole? At school, they are confined between four walls to do trigonometry, for example, which they will forget after a year. But we will have peace of mind. This is not how you take care of the youth of a country. The idea defended by the president of a speech on civic education is good, but it is not enough. We must take into account the personality of the students, listen to them. It’s much more educational than reading them a long text from someone very respectable. Removing the hours of class life to complete the programs, as is the case in many establishments, seems to me to be a mistake. It is a moment of exchange between all, teachers and students, that must be preserved.
To find our interview with Emmanuel Macron in 5 parts:
1/5: Emmanuel Macron: “On the school, we must get out of French hypocrisies”
2/5: Emmanuel Macron: “I will speak to Vladimir Putin again when it is useful”
3/5: Emmanuel Macron: “I cannot be satisfied with an unemployment rate of 7%! »
4/5: Emmanuel Macron: “We must work to recivilize”
5/5: Emmanuel Macron: “I will preside until the last quarter of an hour”
2023-08-26 08:23:31
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