Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Myth of perfect student

The myth of the perfect student school failure and questioned how the French educational supports. Engendered by the teacher / pupil relationship?

In France, the school has historically been the symbol of Republican values ​​and culture inherited from the Enlightenment. Yet since the early twentieth century with the beginnings of compulsory schooling, school failure affects approximately 10% of students, regardless of the time and methods. School failure is stigmatized, and often, instead of blaming the education or the teacher is the student who is beckoned. However, learning is based primarily on the relationship of the student to his master.

Blame it on Voltaire
French pedagogy sometimes seems to want to erase the differences between individuals. Despite his borrowed glances of jealousy toward the North, true role models of academic success and personal well-being, France remains blind to the knowledge of the humanities: chronobiology, developmental psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience itself. The debate around the four-day week is a good example: we have known for decades the times of day and the rhythms of the week are most conducive to learning. But the question posed seems more for adults (organization weekends, holidays ...). So when the child is tired, demotivated or difficulty, it is easier to blame rather than the nonsense of the school system.

Students will perfect that which the master would have wanted to be
The population of teachers is very varied, nearly 65% ​​of women (75% in private), mostly from the middle classes. Pierre Bourdieu is one of the first to loudly denounced the reproduction of the social hierarchy through the school. This application of homogenization is mainly through language: a way of talking (and writing) is recovered, the others are denigrated, particularly because they represent social classes devalued. More generally, there would be one good way to learn and reproduce this knowledge. But learning is an intimate operation that involves more than cognitive skills: personal history, the ability to accept other sources of learning that parents desire to give or not to the adult that he asks ...

Interest of errors: parallel between phylogeny and ontogeny
Adults often tell children that they have the right to be wrong, that's how we learn. This truth does not always hold true in reality where the error may be stigmatized or penalized. However, the error is central to the history of ideas. Zero is a very good example is the basic mathematical concept that has more time to emerge in the course of history (phylogeny) and one that is more complicated to understand for children (ontogeny ). However, the error of the student comes to symbolize the extent of explaining the master and it can be difficult to accept for it. Between what is said explicitly to the students and what they are implicitly asked, there is often a large margin.


The didactic contract: Pride and Prejudice
The didactic contract is an ongoing negotiation and implicit mutual expectations between the teacher and student. This concept has been used to study elective failure: why some students are in great difficulty in a particular subject or why some fail where the majority is success? We've all experienced "darlings" and then "heads of Turkish" attitude and demands of the master are not the same according to the students, as students do not behave identically with all their teachers. The educational relationship is above all a human relationship where communication is also based on implicit information and a dynamic unconscious. Indeed, the relationship of authority which takes place between teacher and student can be an avatar of parent / child relationship.

Our dear soldiers of the Republic Pedagogical deny it enough, they can not do everything: play the role of parents, to be nurses, psychologists, sociologists and educators, in a word always be perfect. However, the plurality of master / child should be better taken into account. Lack of resources is often put forward but the training is now more than ever questioned. The quality of working conditions but it suffers especially students who pay the price: being a student is becoming more and more not to be subject.

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