School is the place where a society conveys its values, and therefore,
first, the place where they are reflected. Thus the success or failure of
school, is first the values that a generation wants to convey to the next.
French values are those of an agrarian society, of agricultural origin,
where accumulation is centered around a State to which everyone is connected
in a straight line and where excellence goes through reason only. This leads
to emphasize the selection of a very particular elite, an elite of reason,
essentially hereditary, pyramidal, accumulating wealth around a center,
emphasizing the spirit of geometry, individualistic art par excellence, and
selected by competition in Ivy League, of course Parisian, in a direct
relationship of the teacher with every student, like power with every
citizen.
This system fails today because it does not value the windings and
labyrinths, because it excludes the intelligence of intuition, because it
addresses to a great many that are very diverse, with methods of thoughts
for small homogenous groups and socially privileged. A system that does not
trust, that does not win somebody’s trust, which does not lead to understand
that everyone has a stake in the success of others, which despises all that
is not intellectual work, which does not value creativity, imagination,
error, risk taking.
However, today’s world needs, empathy, experience, cooperation of networks,
tribes. It requires that newcomers know the universe of movement, change,
living, intuition, collectivity. Hence the failure of our school system,
with inadequate methods, leading almost half of the children to leave
primary school unable to read and write, with 130,000 leaving compulsory
education without a diploma. And many other dead ends.
Everything must change. We need to move to a customized education, putting
everyone in a position to discover what he is best suited for and how it can
be advantageous for him, to help others grow, in order to succeed.
To achieve this it will not be enough to create some boarding schools of
excellence, which will only broaden homeopathically the scope of an
anachronistic elite, but we will have to change our world view, to give
priority to collective focus, diversity, intuition and creativity. And for
that, first, to train teachers to a new world. Most importantly,
upstream, change the eye of the parents over their children, they should no
longer wish to make them the best in the disciplines most sought for in
their time, they should no longer believe that success, tomorrow, will
resemble what they dreamed of in their youth. They must recognize that it
will pass first through the free choice of models of success, individual or
collective, economic or social, political or non- profit, which remain to be
imagined with the students themselves and thus through excellence in
constantly renewed disciplines, custom assemblies of multiple knowledge.
This is the most difficult leap a generation must make if it wants to really
be useful for the following ones.