Julian Assange
617 weeks of deprivation of liberty for telling the truth
617 weeks of deprivation of liberty for telling the truth
On the occasion of its tenth anniversary in 2006, the Appel pour une école démocratique (APED) drew up a ten-point program designed to halt the Belgian school disaster, which is characterized by by three lines. 1. record inequality, caused primarily by underfunding in the core; 2. early selection into hierarchical streams 3. an educational system contaminated by liberalism, since it is based on the principle of supply and demand and on the dogma of competition (between schools, between students). If we really want to reduce the school divide and allow each young person to acquire the knowledge and skills that give them the strength to understand the world and to transform it in order to make it fairer and more viable, then it will be necessary to shake some of the « historical constraints » of the Belgian school system, some of which stem from the 1959 School Pact, which is, moreover, timidly being questioned today (1).
Compulsory schooling should be a lever to understand how humanity got « there » at the beginning of the 21st century and how it could get out of the tunnel of unsustainable growth and « biocidal capitalism » (Michel Weber, 2013). It should even become a sanctuary against oblivion, a repository of philosophical ideas and practical knowledge that will be very useful to us one day, when industrial civilization collapses for good (2). Finally, let us see it, in the shorter term, as an instrument of collective emancipation as well as a place of individuation, education and socialization. Each child must develop his or her talents while becoming a social being. Apart from the very small percentage of children with specific mental disabilities, all students are certainly capable of accessing the basic general and polytechnic education knowledge and skills that APED advocates, with progressive school reform.
Despite the good intentions of the 1997 « Missions » decree, the current school is far from achieving all these objectives. Not only does it fail to produce citizens capable of understanding and engaging with the world, but worse, it imposes the opposite idea: young people should, it seems, accept the world as it is and learn to adapt to it. This is the new, completely perverted definition of autonomy! On the other hand, should we accept the ever more scandalous inequality between a minority of the wealthy and the majority of the population reduced to surviving (the 99% of the Indignant)? Accepting increasingly deregulated working conditions? Accepting the destruction of nature for short-term financial interests? Tolerating the intolerable? The school cannot be an accomplice to such a disaster!
If we focus our attention on children from working-class backgrounds, it is clear that the social inequality of which they are initially victims is prolonged and reinforced at school. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron were right when they wrote Les héritiers in 1964. This is the case from kindergarten onwards, within each class, between classes within the same school, or between different schools. In secondary school, segregation is structurally organized and amplified by the different streams (general, technical, vocational). This injustice is reinforced by the liberalism of our school system (its quasi-market organization and competition between schools and networks). In other words, it is the defects of capitalism that are applied and reproduced by the school. There are also those pedagogical practices that give pride of place to a relationship to knowledge typical of the wealthy social and/or intellectual classes. And that’s not all: too many children from working-class backgrounds are directed to special education. Moreover, we are talking about young people who are considered « unschoolable ». Let’s not blame teachers: there are too few of them and too little time to allow all young people to succeed and to integrate what they have learned in school into their lives and practices. In addition, they must continually resist parents and administrators in an attempt to maintain their authority in the classroom (see the article on this topic in this issue).
For a significant number of children, school failure or repetition (or the fear of failure and repetition) causes real suffering. The pressure of evaluation, the pressure to « succeed in school » is sometimes excessive, even within families. Too many students come to school with leaden feet, question the meaning of what they come to do, lack motivation, find virtual life on the Internet more exhilarating, and arrive at school connected. The average size of schools, which has been constantly increasing over the past twenty years, does not help matters: mammoth schools are becoming barracks schools. And teachers, particularly in schools where difficulties are concentrated, are finding their jobs increasingly difficult. A heaviness amplified by programs that are too often incoherent, unreadable and, paradoxically, not very ambitious (especially in the qualifying field). It is not useless to note how much the suffering of the students participates in that of the teachers… and vice versa. To conclude this indictment, let’s emphasize the social — and financial — cost of all these young people who drop out of such a catastrophic school system! Let us now try to imagine the possibility of another school through these proposals, which can be taken as a whole, but whose implementation details need to be refined or imagined.
After a separate kindergarten education, with clearly defined objectives — acquisition of the spoken language, spatialization and autonomy — APED proposes a single common basic education structure, from 6 to 15 years old, with the disappearance of the break between primary and secondary education. Concretely, this reform is materialized by the redistribution of school entities. In this common school, children progressively pass from a single teacher to specialized teachers by branch. From 16 to 18/19 years old, young people attend preparatory high schools for higher education or high schools that provide qualifications. But in all cases, a common base of general education is organized. Finally, it should be noted that the common school does not mean the disappearance of special education for children and young people with particular disabilities.
APED hopes that all students will attain basic skills and knowledge (math, reading, foreign languages), that all students will acquire a high level of common culture (history, geography, science, literature, art, philosophy, etc.), that all students will be introduced to the technologies of production and daily life (Information and Communication Technologies (3)It is important that all of them receive physical education and sports training. Finally, APED is attached to the discovery and valorization of the productive act, not only the various trades, but also the associative activity, gardening, crafts, etc.(4). In short, something other than consuming the products of the mediaphere (Internet, television, video games, smartphones). This general and polytechnic education for all implies the abandonment of any professional specialization before the age of 16.
To avoid « ghetto » schools, in other words to guarantee a social mix in each school, a school is assigned to each student from the first year and for a period of ten years, except in the event of an accident or relocation. This assignment is based on residence and income. This system requires a geographical division of the territory into socially mixed areas.
Only by merging the networks will it be possible to achieve social diversity and rational use of infrastructure. This is the price to pay if we really want to reduce social inequality and create a democratic school. The removal of the denominational character also seems desirable to avoid the rise of religious communitarianism. The common school will be that of a single network, necessarily public.
The key idea is that a class group progresses together, especially in the early years of the common school. There are fifteen children per class in the first three years (ages six to nine), and a maximum of twenty beyond these primordial years. Most of the work takes place in this class, but various strategies must be devised to support students who need it, as soon as they need it: supervised study after class, group and/or individual remedial work, accelerated language courses for students from immigrant backgrounds, individualized guidance, and the provision of a resource center in each school for all students.
If we want to reconcile working-class children with school, it must become their main place of life, where meals, games, movie nights and other cultural, sports and technical activities are prepared and shared. This is where citizenship is exercised: instruction and education are intimately linked to social life. It develops the values of cooperation, solidarity, creativity, love of science, technology, art, philosophy, physical activity, nature, etc. The common school opens up to other educational venues: civic and cultural associations, youth movements, sports clubs, local festivities… The school can also be open to the participation of parents in projects. Indeed, freed from the competitive logic linked to the current quasi-school market, the parent-school relationship is no longer commercial, but civic, built on an otherwise interesting democratic basis.
As far as pedagogical practices are concerned, we want to avoid the pitfalls of dogmatism (one method would be privileged) and relativism (all methods would be equal). We advocate broad pedagogical autonomy for teachers, provided that learning objectives are strictly defined and monitored. Nevertheless, we observe that some practices « work » better than others, allow for better achievement of the set objectives, and/or are more respectful of the relationship to knowledge of children from working-class backgrounds. The pedagogical sciences are of great importance in this respect, as is the knowledge of the different psychological characteristics of children. It is also necessary to favour pedagogies that give meaning to learning, those that ensure access to understanding and not only to memorization or know-how. It is undoubtedly by integrating a variety of approaches into our practices that we will improve our teaching without falling into the trap of individualized trajectories. It is not a question of imposing these practices by force, but rather of promoting and disseminating them (books, training, Internet). We cannot stress enough the need for teacher education — initial and continuing — that is solid and consistent with the few principles we have just outlined. But let’s not forget that teaching is an art rather than a science.
Programs should clearly and comprehensively outline the knowledge, skills, attitudes and levels of proficiency expected of students. They should insist on key skills, those that need to be reactivated regularly. To support the programs, teachers must have free textbooks, reference books, collections of documents, audio-visual material, software, and lists of Internet sites.
Our school system is sorely lacking in statistical data. We recommend regular centralized testing. Not to judge students — these tests would not be certifying — or to rank schools, but to assess and guarantee levels of achievement, pedagogical practices and the system as a whole. Analysis of this data would guide institutions and teachers.
In order to finance our project, to ensure that school and its related activities are genuinely free, the State will have to devote 7% of its GDP to education again (as it did at the end of the 1970s). Probably more during the ten-year transition period, but some of this can be gradually recouped from the cost of school failure, pathways, options and networks, and from a more rational use of infrastructure. This refinancing can only be done by revising the law on financing communities or by returning the school to the federal fold. And certainly not at the expense of other societal needs (including other public services). A more adequate taxation of the profits of the companies and the wealth of the most privileged Belgians should be more than enough.
The ten points of this program constitute an indissociable whole, without which school liberalism and its inequalities would return in force. The common school, its centralized tests and its pedagogy of success cannot be put in place without the following prerequisites: the end of competition between schools, the revision of programs, the injection of means and, above all, the reduction of inequalities of results in the first years of education.
Bernard Legros
Member of APED
