Emmanuel Macron’s comments on school in Point, Wednesday, August 23, made a part of the educational community jump. The Head of State presents his vision of education, “the heart of the battle” to carry out, because “it is from there that we will rebuild France”. If the objective is shared, the emphasis on “authority of knowledge” And “the authority of the masters”, as well as criticism of“a pedagogism which said basically that the school should no longer transmit” look like “old tunes” for education stakeholders.
“Emmanuel Macron accumulates old and simplistic clichés about school in order to reach the right-wing electorate”, judge Jérôme Fournier, academic secretary of the SE-UNSA teachers’ union. For the former rector Alain Boissinot, Emmanuel Macron “takes up themes that are great classics of the right, without really knowing the file” : “The opposition between pedagogy and transmission has fueled controversy for more than twenty years, without any meaning. The whole art of teaching is to articulate the two and any serious teacher knows this. »
In addition to the conservative tone of the President of the Republic’s remarks, his proposals irritate a good number of education personnel. First and foremost history and geography teachers.
“Chronological” history programs
Emmanuel Macron wants to resume the programs of their discipline so that history is taught “chronologically”. The Association of History and Geography Teachers, through its general secretary Christine Guimonnet, denounces a “public lie”. History is well taught chronologically in primary school, then again in middle school, whose programs date from 2016, and again in high school, where the programs were redesigned at the time of the baccalaureate reform initiated in 2018, when of Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term. “It’s a bad trial, which comes up periodically, simply because some link this subject to issues of national narrative and the construction of identity”analyzes Alain Boissinot.
For the President of the Republic, this renewal of the programs is in fact part of the perspective of a “rebuilding the nation”. Words judged ” dangerous “ by Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of SNES-FSU, the main union for teachers in middle and high schools. “In a democracy, the political power does not have to define the programs”she believes. “The Head of State invokes a backward-looking and erroneous vision of history which casts new discredit on our profession”adds Christine Guimonnet.
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