Charlotte Nordmann

Charlotte Nordmann is an essayist, translator and teacher of philosophy.

A manifesto for democratic schools: it is time to exit from the impotence and infantilisation brought about by the republican school and the siren’s song of reaction.  There is a need for a system to bring about autonomy and emancipation. 

The nature of the “republican school” is the fundamental problem.  Since its foundation it has contained an irreducible contradiction; in effect its function is two fold, one hand it is democratisation, on the other it is hierarchisation. 

These contradictory principles can be seen to originate in the ideology of work; of merit and its recompense.  The hierarchies produced by schools are founded on the ascent of the best, that is to say, “the most worthy”. 

Today, having given up on equality, we say that school must provide “equality of opportunity”.  That at least ensures that all have the same chances from the start, from then on it is up to the individual to prove their worth and to obtain the means for their promotion. This has always been tenable with difficulty if we look at the situation with a real concern for democracy; today it has become unsupportable. The section of children coming from less favoured backgrounds having access to the “Grandes Écoles” was negligible in the 1960s, today that figure has decreased at a time when there is mass unemployment and precarious work has become common, so how can this culture of work and merit be of any use. 

Phrases like “we must “restore authority”, “there must be respect for the teacher” or “the inherent value of work” are trotted out, indicating that this discourse has no hold on the clamorous and omnipresent realities. 

This because all of that has been lost, has been devalued and trampled underfoot by oblivious profiteers who are oblivious as to where we are now. 

The grave of a really democratic school was dug in May 1968.  It was democratic in the full sense of the term as its demands were equal for everybody.  It gave the children, amongst them the most meritorious for sure, the means to rejoin the ranks of their superiors… men of whom their country would be proud. 

The partiality of the principles of selection has undermined the foundations of our democracy. The school no longer functions as a social elevator (How many places in the lift?) because it has ceased defending its fundamental principles, work, effort, merit, again and especially respect. A truce of evasions; now everyone knows that they are responsible for their destiny and that sociology was only created to provide the wretched with excuses – like the fiction that liberty was only created, in Nietzsche’s words, to be able to punish. 

Can you imagine a more useless argument?

There are sad arguments out there, look at the desperate individuals foreseeing their powerlessness, regretting the failure heralded by the campaign against the flow of a time where the verdict has already been decided beforehand, of an era unworthy of the description “democratic” that has become the standard bearer of vulgarity and mediocrity. 

Can you imagine a more shameful discourse than one that makes those who “can’t get up early” guilty and accusing them of being responsible for their sufferings. 

Besides, what could they do if they got up early, what work could they do?  These are precisely the questions that are forbidden by the return of anachronistic discussions. 

It’s all about the death of democratic hope, the social promotion is allowed to certain individuals, hoping to save some, in global contempt those of whose social origin is questionable. 

It’s about learning to recognise that the existing social order is the only possible one, accepting its principles and limits and, above all, submitting oneself to it, then defending and respecting it. 

Is the ideal of a “good student” an even more fundamental point; of the “serious pupil really desirable?  The reverence and submission that this position so often implies, the dependence upon the teacher and the undervaluing are all problematic. 

The word that best describes the problems produced by the current system is “impotence”.  The impotence of the pupils, dispossessed of any autonomous relationship with knowledge, writing and language.

The impotence of the teachers continually forced to make assessments and dispossessed of any means of making the machine function better, ceaselessly feeling a sense of persistent absurdity. 

The impotence of parents, who want a lot from school, but without understanding why it is incapable of fulfilling its promises. 

School inculcates “That’s the way that school is and it won’t be any other way” and one has to go with it.  One might say, “First and foremost, pass the exams”.  In principle one has to follow this route because it is not permitted to make your own way. 

They talk to us about “Democracy at school”, but what control do the pupils have over their courses and how they are organised?

The principles of “Institutional Pedagogy” allow us to bring some concrete responses to these problems. If democratic politics were to be employed then one of the barriers that would be removed would be that of the school; an alternative school is possible. 

Today, the contradiction that seems to be aggravated, with measures such as allowing a free choice of schools and the obligation of teachers trained in one discipline to teach two, is the tendency to accentuate the hierarchy between schools, whilst rejecting the universal access to knowledge and the mastery of the essential abilities needed for autonomous intellectual activities. 

We hope that this untenable situation for everyone who attends whatever type of school will arouse the desire to change things. 

For an alternative to exist or for schools to function in a different way, it is essential not to think that it is purely a problem of pedagogy. The outcomes do not depend solely on the methods used, out the values embodied.  The syllabic method or the global approach do not have all the powers ascribed to them, they do not produce rigorous and analytical attitudes, free spirits or subjugated individuals.  

Neither is it necessary to focus on the means or the financial investment in schools. To start with, the idea that the weak uncertain mind should be guided by a competent educated individual needs challenging.

It is necessary to talk about the organisation, the material and human circumstances that bring about success for everyone. Here Freinet and “Institutional Pedagogy” suggest concrete measures to exit from the teacher-pupil situation brought about by the “school machine” which is only a motor for narcissism or pupil anxiety or the need to “please the teacher”.

There is an urgent need to politicise the question, not only in terms of the “endlessly reductive” and the resistance to the marketisation of education, as important as they are; it is necessary not to avoid the inherent contradiction in the logic of the school, in order to find the means to highlight its emancipatory role against its function of creating a hierarchy. 

The political issues around the acquisition of reading and writing skills, the relationships with language and knowledge need re-examining. 

How can we encourage autonomy?

How can the reliance upon the “educated” and “experts” in the transmission of knowledge be questioned?  

To democratise teaching could mean putting it within the grasp of a new public, by simplifying the content and reducing it to its basic elements. This commendable approach ignores many important aspects of knowledge, including those that are constructed historically and the arguments about it that arise from a political background. 

It is necessary to examine our own relationships with language and knowledge in our search for our own autonomy. We need to break out of this infantilising circle in order to think about and to want other possibilities. 

In this undeniably difficult situation it is necessary to exit from the anxiety that paralyses us, to see the effect of maintaining the status quo which would ruin all that we would wish to defend and to renounce all desirable aims.  It is anything but naïve to affirm that it is necessary to restore confidence in our ability to act and to cultivate the desire for true democracy.