In Praise of Luc Chatel and attempts to improve French education

I was just getting into Luc Chatel - French Education bashing mode, when today's Libération feature "The Minister Doesn't Know How to Count" struck me as so unfair that I had to change course.

So today, here's a list of good things that the Minister of Education (or his predecessor Darcos) has done:

1) Four day week in primary school

Overwhelmingly desired by parents (80%!) who were sick to death of working all week then getting up on Saturday to accompany their child to school (not to mention divorced parents from whom Saturday classes created endless conflict and hassle), the elimination of classes on Saturday has been fought tooth and nail by those with a financial stake in the old system. They trot out experts to point out that the French school day is too long, which was true before, remains true now, and will probably always be true. Not because of school-free Saturdays, but because women in France work, and there are no adults at home in the afternoons.

2) Reform of teacher training.

It is simply false to pretend that young teachers are thrown into classrooms with no preparation whatsoever ONLY NOW. It was ever and always the case in Collège and Lycée. What's changed is IUFM theoretical training the first year, and the pretense that the system worked before. It didn't. Truly, it was awful.

But the solution is not, dear Mr. Chatel, to eliminate teacher training entirely! The solution is to put into place EXCELLENT teacher training, preferably by top notch teacher trainers.

So the government gets bad marks for teacher training. But so does the opposition, who's been faking it for years. Match nul. Let everyone do better. Please.

3) Liberalization of school catchment areas.

Why should kids in ghettos be condemned to stay in ghettos? This is the real question here. Doesn't everyone deserve a shot at a decent education? Too much hypocrisy by defenders of the status quo on this one. This said, the only real solution is to improve the number of good schools. and this requires more autonomy by school principals to fix failing institutions to render them attractive.

4) The battle of statistics.

The real question--not answered in the Libé article --is how many fonctionnaires in the National Education system are actually working in the classroom with students and how many are shuffling papers behind closed doors or not doing much of anything at all?

This explains the discrepancies in numbers.

The non-replacement of absent teachers, inefficient allocation of teachers and the sheer weight of the central bureaucracy--these issues must be dealt with. And, for the time being (and much to my sorrow) the left is not proposing anything so reform must come from the right.

By the way, teachers SHOULD be able to teach more than one subject--as is the case elsewhere. It is NOT normal to pay people not to work because you can't figure out what to do with them and can't force them to change job descriptions. This hurts the kids and does teachers no good at all. Why defend such soul crushing rigidities?

Here's a figure I'd like to see: classroom teachers as a % of Education Nationale employees.

Or even better: hours spend IN THE CLASSROOM as a % of hours paid (including sickleave, vacation, training, whatever).

5) The evolution of teacher pay and teacher hours.

Pay (as Libération admits) is up, and teaching hours are down. That is good, isn't it? Now, results should follow.... When there is progress, the least one could do is admit it.

6) Challenging the Collège Unique..

Left, right, unions, governments, parents--EVERYONE observes a problem with the collège.

For heaven's sake, drop the ideology people and let's deal with it!

My own criticism with Sarkozy's ministers is not their policies or aims. It's their follow-though. If a problem is tackled, it should be wrestled to the ground and defeated once and for all.

Courage, stamina, fortitude!

It's not easy to improve education. Every major democracy is fighting similar problems--not just France.

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This is a reaction to "Le Ministre ne sait pas compter" published in Libération on May9, 2011 by Véronique Soulé et Nicolas Demorand