Abstract
Discover the critical link between education and social inequality, and how it affects individual autonomy. Explore the perspectives of Rousseau and Hannah Arendt on the politicization of education and its impact on meritocracy. Understand the crisis in education, its historical roots, and the discrepancy between promised equality of opportunity and actual outcomes. Learn how the blurring of lines between the world of children and adults, and the influence of liberal economic principles on education, contribute to this crisis. Uncover the need for a clear separation between education and politics to restore the effectiveness of the meritocratic system and promote true equality of opportunity.
Extract
[...] The analysis of Hannah Arendt in "The Crisis of Education" (The Crisis of Culture), since she thinks thatwe must firmly separate the domain of education from other domains, and especially that of political and public life ». According to Arendt, the evolution of society towards a more libertarian, liberal trend in the broad sense, should not extend from the universe of 'adults' to that of 'children', and authority, which has no place in the political sphere, must be maintained within the framework of education. [...]
[...] Is there a crisis in education? The meritocratic system of the National Education, resulting from primary education for all established under the Third Republic, and which still prevails today in France, guarantees a supposed equality of opportunity for success, both at university and professionally, regardless of the socio-professional backgrounds from which students come. It must be noted that today the effectiveness of such equality is debated, and while universities and the education they provide are indeed public and open to all, this massive access of French people to higher education is regularly questioned as to its effectiveness from a meritocratic point of view. [...]
[...] Thus, Émile's tutor is entrusted with the task of educating him to make him man', which means teaching him to live, independently, both alone and with others. The political stake of education is therefore evident, and in this sense it is worth keeping in mind that the education one receivesa fortiori public education) is always linked to the interests of the political system in which we evolve. This allows us to understand one of the charges brought against our current educational system: the successive changes in school programs and teaching methods, thought in view of subordinating the school to the expectations of a world governed by the rules of the free market, that is, competitiveness. [...]
[...] The notion of crisis allows us to think of a grave, worrying phase, in the evolution of an organism or an institution, which is enlightening in this context. In the case of a living organism, for example, the crisis occurs as the symptom of a latent illness that, at an advanced stage of its occupation of the sick body, triggers a brutal and violent reaction. To speak of a "crisis in education" means thinking of the evolution of an illness, of a malfunction over a long period, of which the crisis is only the symptom and the consequence, and which must be taken care of for itself. [...]
[...] Here again, we can feed the reflection with a reading of theÉmile and of the Social Contract. Rousseau believes that the close correlation between education and a political system based on deep social inequalities is the source of a missed education, depriving individuals of independence and autonomy that an education based on the "natural" characteristics of man could not fail to offer. The example of social demotion highlights this position of Rousseau: if a man is educated (both in terms of his daily conduct and his theoretical knowledge) for a social position that should be his due to his birth, and he happens to fall in the social hierarchy, then this man is lost to himself and to others, so difficult it will be for him to adapt to the position that has now fallen to him. [...]
