Education Is the Heart of Civilization

Because it transmits values and knowledge, education can contribute by its action on the formation of youth, so the company tomorrow and do a human society, or a democracy flourish dynamic citizens, critical thinking but developed civic sense, or an apathetic society and subject, or even obscurantist and authoritarian, like the planet as a door.

image source: oxfamblogs.org

image source: oxfamblogs.org

Today, students, whatever their age, spend more time watching television than on school benches. Television, such as new media from his marriage with computer and telecommunication networks, represents a formidable challenge for public officials. If the school is not fully meeting its mission, then it will be the values held by those who fund and decide the orientation of the products to which young people are exposed on screens, consoles and networks, which will dominate the world tomorrow. Often different values that aims to convey the School of the Republic. This would not be without damage to society.

The instruction is both the best weapon that can be provided to individuals in the changing world of today, and the best guarantee for the competitiveness of our economies, that is to say, as the best guarantee of maintaining social advances that benefit our European societies, especially ours. The two concepts are related and we will not win the challenge of efficiency without also win the justice and equity.

image source: blog.avast.com

image source: blog.avast.com

Place of learning for young people, where the possibility of true equality of opportunity fits for various social categories and place where the chances of building the nation in global economic competition, the school is the crucible in which our future is taking shape. The fundamental nature of its mission fully justifies it represents the priority for a state committed to the individual and collective success, as well as the development of an equal opportunity society.

The school system has had to respond in a few decades to a rapid growth in the number of children and young people in school over a period of longer and longer. It was not easy, it was realized, thanks to the efforts, dedication and the high quality of hundreds of thousands of teachers. But this success remains, in itself, insufficient.

Despite the ongoing and rapid growth of its budget (France spends more money in school than most of our neighbors), the name of an “ever” that marked most of the policies, the results of our education does not match our expectations for efficiency and solidarity. The privilege of birth is more than ever and the socioeconomic and cultural factors still weigh more on the course and determine, in the early years, the trajectories. The share of young original “modest” in large schools was an over 20% in the 50s has fallen to less than 10% today. The 80,000 students at the college entrance have great difficulty reading and writing, 50,000 young people annually without a degree out of the system and that will, for many of them, strengthen the ranks of the unemployed, come mainly from disadvantaged families. This failure of initial training is frustrating and hopeless for individuals; it weighs heavily on the collective success and social cohesion.

The education system needs to realize that it has an obligation of results than means. School failure also marks the failure of the school. A renovation of the public service of education must have this dual complementary objective: make it more efficient and egalitarian.

Make it a condition of equality of opportunity, the preferred means of social mobility, an element of collective success.
The values of the Left Modern, fairness, accountability, social justice are reflected in our project for the school and for education, as it finds our desire to make the school a springboard for all, a possibility for the largest number of young people to succeed his civic and professional life.

The school should help against the advantages and disadvantages inherited through a demanding system and adapted to different situations, valuing several courses and using appropriate allowances, so differentiated ways.

A variety of social and territorial situations, the need to be closer to their realities, needs and expectations to be met to enable their success, must logically correspond tailored educational projects, methods, differentiated orientations; human resource management, evaluation and training of teachers must also take into account the specificities and different situations, requiring autonomy, cooperation of different social and local actors.

Beyond its role of transmitting knowledge and school citizenship, the school should be interested in becoming students. It should allow a satisfactory orientation, decline a prospective vision of employment.

Civilization must design and implement a public education service, able to ensure its development in the context of globalization, as well as giving its youth the means to build its future. To make it up to this ambition, France is imperative to reform the public service.

image source: seritrustindia.com

image source: seritrustindia.com

All educational reforms, even those that were consistent in their principles, have faced for decades to a sclerotic and rigid system in form, and opposition, political or corporate, that led the state to be waive or emptying of the positive contribution that could have their content. He only stayed a disorganization of the previous situation, ultimately detrimental to the functioning of the institution and the training of students.

Beyond the design of reforms, it is the method needs to be reviewed.

The proposals that follow and that we consider necessary, could not in any case be implemented globally and brutally.

There will be no “big night” of education. There will be no “comprehensive reform” of education. Any proposed reform should be the subject of consultation, broad discussions with teachers, with elected officials, with the associations, but also with all citizens, because we are all involved in education. Nothing should be undertaken without a consensus, but it is also necessary, when the information was wide, the lively debate, sufficient negotiations, maintain entrenched positions without yielding to minority oppositions to violent or that sustainable they may be, must not abandon the public interest.