Essay on the Future of Education

The new era of education shall reconnect with the fundamental conception of education, the one of the Age of Enlightenment,

Education :  a term that has suffered from a deep change in its meaning since the Age of Enlightenment to become a concept inflected and denatured. There remains only the shadow of this ideal of the Age of Enlightenment that Normand Baillargeon defines as «[..] a bet made on the reason and the knowledge, as privileged instruments of individual emancipation and collective progress, of a bet on the virtues of equal opportunities, a bet on the freedom and value of individuals. These multiple bets seemed reasonable and it was soon considered that they went hand in hand with a certain ideal of participatory democracy, which in turn involved a very particular ethical model, the one of discussion and deliberation involving individuals capable of a certain intellectual and moral attitude towards social, political and economic issues, problems and debates that affect us all. »

This humanistic and noble ideal which aims at the intellectual autonomy of the Man in a healthy democracy is today menaced by the industry which corrupts the independence of the institutions and therefore the emancipation of the spirits as the private fills the void of the state disengagement.

The DNA of the school was genetically modified. The phenomenon is global. In the United States alone, millions of students use the educational material offered by private companies, and elsewhere Channel One introduces its commercial content to schools.

In the same vein, the education project should not be confined to a utilitarian economic perspective that aims to produce an obedient workforce that responds to the demands of a division of labor that does not fail to to make the worker "as stupid and as ignorant as it is possible for a human being to become" [sic], as said Adam Smith, father of the market economy.

A correct conception of education is irreducible and even opposed to these material and myopic considerations. It goes far beyond, it aims the sovereignty of the spirit. A society which uses education as an economic articulation turns its sting against itself and condemns itself to decadence, to the dictatorship of spirits.

John Dewey, a philosopher, psychologist, and intellectual, wanted to make the school a place of intellectual empowerment, where "the traditional occupations of students are free from economic constraint. The goal is not the market value of products, but the development of autonomy and social insight. "  In more simple words, a place where the virtues of education are considered for what they are in themselves intrinsically.

Again, according to John Dewey: "The principal vocation of all human beings and of all times is the moral and intellectual growth, education must ultimately endeavor to produce not goods, but human beings freely associated with each other. to others on an equal basis ".

In other words, the school must be a sanctuary totally free from outside forces to preserve critical thinking, creative thinking, knowledge and knowledge of the world.

The British mathematician, logician, philosopher and epistemologist, Bertrand Russell, agrees in the same way by adding the parameters of the personalization of instruction and creativity. "Education," he said, "aims to stimulate and strengthen the creative impulses of each individual." 

This brings the last stone to the edifice of humanistic education. Certainly already functional, the current education system should, at its next reform, return to a more humanistic, liberal and personalized conception of education if we want to control the destiny of our nation and our species.