13. Training the citizen
Do not believe that I lose sight of my subject. It is that of education, but how is it possible to see clearly without giving it the correct frame. Thus, for example, being mathematics, you see from where comes the difficulty in teaching it: it is a language which does not speak itself, but which is only written. You see the problem for the pupils! Imagine if one says to a three year old child: “You will speak French only when you can write it”. You can be sure that they will never speak.
But what I especially wanted to draw your attention to, the last time, is to the enormous silliness of our education which continues, even today, to favour the language (which signifies, etymologically, the word itself “teaching”, and not “put in sign”). But the “implementation”, if I can say, in other words the operation, is worth the setting in sign completely, all the same. One cannot make the man by taking into account only his aptitude for slobbering. This point taken, you understand that it is this reduction of our education to the setting in signs which produces, itself, “school waste”, the “handicap”, which one tries to cure. The “remediation”, “extra coaching”, etc, it’s shaming. That makes employment, true! But for problems created in any way by teachers themselves, and it is simply scandalous, if one thinks of the pupils. One complains of them planting a knife in the belly of their professor. But here is a “sign of a completely significant time”. Do not believe that I approve such behaviour, but finally they are the signs of a rejection of the teachers, i.e. of this formidable monopolization by Professors of what constitutes education. They grabbed it all, even the gym. In my time there were gym monitors, exactly as you learned how to ski with a skiing instructor. Now, we have “gymnastics professors”, forgive me, “professors of physical education and sport”, and do you know what they do with their pupils? Essays written on subjects like “a healthy mind in a healthy body”, etc… I do not invent any of this. Absolutely nothing! Better, I know here, in Marseilles an absolutely remarkable person who, wishing to become a potter, had to obtain their Vocational training certificate (the C.A.P.). This poor person was stuck because of their low English level! It is so enormously unfair that I almost do not find it believable. You will say yourselves: “As usual, it beggars belief”. Find out yourself.
All this is serious. Very serious! And you see, at the same time, that to want to make eighty percent of graduates, under such conditions, is to make at least seventy-five percent of them unhappy, and unhappy for life. So, if they could stop speaking to us about “equal opportunity”. The equal opportunity would be a baccalaureate with a French oral test and a (quiet) test of operation, with the same coefficient. But one would also need two other tests: one of good citizenship and one of morality (completely quiet also) and of the same coefficient. Because to educate the man does not consist in removing his idiocies, it is also to make a citizen and a virtuous man. But you will say: “Everyone cannot be virtuous”. It is true that there are many congenital amoralists, (surely more than you think), but at this time, the candidate with the baccalaureate will be able to catch up in one or another of the three other tests. And if he cannot become a good citizen (because there are the immature congenital ones, it is certain, as there are the atechnics or aphasics), this candidate will also catch up, on the other tests.
You will say: “You dream”. Not at all, I even believe that it is towards that we go. And if you think that there is Utopia in my remarks, I will answer you that there is no more than in our republican motto (“Freedom, equality, fraternity”), than one needs to live and it depends on each one of us, rather of you, given my age, that this Utopia becomes reality. Then, in any case, it becomes pointless to reform teaching, which represents only one quarter of any education, and it is to the remaining three quarters that I started to concentrate on, the last time, while speaking to you about Homo faber. Well, today, I propose to study the training of Homo politicus, and the next time that of Homo ethicus, which I will encompass under the following title: “The shipwreck of authority”.
You understand that in primary education, French is not a subject like any other. Admittedly, it is the only language in which the teacher must initiate the child, but the teacher teaches French, with the proviso “French” not simply being the French language: to teach French, is to train a future citizen who speaks French, but also who gets dressed in a certain manner, who has a certain type of common morality, who has certain artistic or technical aptitudes, etc… In other words, at the elementary school, what one calls “French” is not a subject like another: it is the initial nebula. To a German, this nebula will be German, to a Chinese, it will be Chinese, etc To summarise, one can do nothing about the fact that the mothering which corresponds to the impregnation locates us in history and consequently makes us, from the point of view of emergence to civilization, French, German or Chinese.
You see that the child, when it arrives at school does not have anything to learn, because if the child is born with the capacity for language, it is also born with the capacity for tools and that is standard, which can only appear through what we will call a “maternal technique” and a “maternal code”. The school, on this account, could not initiate the child with the technique: the child even though very small, already handles its toys and dismantles them (to say that it breaks them, is to judge it as compared to an adult), where an animal would not handle nor dismantle. In the same way, very small, the child arrives at self-control (it very quickly becomes clean), and it is not at all stupid to think that it has a “moral direction” (or that he has none), that the school will never give him (or that it will be able to never remove from him). For this reason, in the first years of school which go from the kindergarten to the entry to the college, the child does not have to acquire (those that claim the opposite are jokers), but to accustom itself. So that when it arrives at school, it has, at the same time, nothing and everything to learn. Nothing because it does not have to learn how to speak (it knows), it does not have to learn how to handle (it knows), it does not have to learn how to control itself (it knows), and at the same time the child has a lot to learn insofar as that the school teaches him, to better conform to the linguistic, technical and moral use of the society in which his/her parents (without asking its opinion!) force it to be inserted. In other words, the teacher does not have to give to the child the language, the technique nor the standard, but to give it the words, the tools and the “maternal” code.
Here is the true civic instruction, which could not be any “subject matter” of a program amongst others: it is the program. One sees certain teachers making the pupils vote, to initiate them with the operation of institutions like the municipal, general or regional council: it is fun! The children lend themselves to this entertainment as they would another game! Actually, the only trade of the teacher is to instruct civics, i.e. to train the future citizen linguistically, technically and ethically. When the teacher involves the child in tracing sticks, calculations, playing the piano or to use verbs, they only constitute future citizens.
It rises from this uniqueness of the “matter” combined with the uniqueness of the “method” (the constraint) that the elementary school could not at all know how to handle the age of the schoolchildren or any “level”. When a large family is joined together for a meal, the consistent use of cutlery applies to everyone at the same time (from three to eleven years old) and one takes no account of alleged levels and other “rhythms of training” (one year for the fork training, a second year for the knife training, etc! …). Under these conditions, it is clear that at the elementary school, to distinguish from the “levels” by class (primary lessons, elementary lessons, middle lessons.) is an artifice that is completely absurd (the teachers have fun!). Moreover, everyone still remembers the absolutely splendid results obtained by devoted teachers in the small countryside elementary schools made up of a single class. And it is quite obvious that one could easily return to this formula without expense. It would be enough that the children go to school only part-time (the poor children have so many hours at school that they are stunned, dazed, develop phobias etc). In this way the teacher’s work would consist in having lessons in the morning with a group of ten schoolchildren of different ages, and the afternoon with another group of ten (it is true that such a manner of teaching would implicate new “schoolteachers” giving up the organisation of snail races in “lessons of awakening”!). Fine, you may say, but the parents? Are you trying to suggest that school has become for them only one immense free nursery? It would be totally wrong!
After these years working towards citizenship, i.e. after the entry in sixth, the young adult must train himself near monitors (and not professors): it is absolutely necessary to invent this monitoring, which has nothing to do with the trade of a teacher, nor with that of a professor. The monitor must be an interlocutor whose only mission is to give to this young adult a direction of relativity. I insist particularly on this term “relativity” which I employ at the same time in the sense of Einstein, and in the way of having a relation. In other words, it is necessary that the child, having emerged as a person, can blame the former dictate of his teacher, that it therefore becomes aware of the perfect arbitrarity of the law which he has until then undergone, to be capable to discuss it, to agree to it or renounce it. In short, the child, when it emerges as a person must emerge with a sense of relativity.
The problem of the training of the citizen, under these conditions, is not at all a problem of the contents of teaching, it is the problem of the negotiation, i.e. the problem of the arbitrary in any relationship. However this arbitrarity, which was imposed on them in primary education, will appear doubled. I said previously that language, from the mediationist point of view, is at the same time speech and doxa (i.e. a certain organization of the knowledge). Well, what occurs starting from the sixth class?
Initially, one must initiate the teenager with a variation of speech by making it think what its doing while being initiated with “foreign” languages, so that it becomes aware of the relativity of what was taught to him about being French during the maternal period. It does not matter that these “foreign” languages are “dead” or “alive”: that has no importance on the training of the citizen. But it should be understood that it is this that makes it possible for the young adult to emerge with his own language like a foreigner, since it can compare it to others. At the elementary school, French is French only for you, who chose for the child. But when the young adult emerges with French, its language becomes French for him, precisely because he opposes it to English, German, etc… Consequently he must learn how to relativise his speech.
Coming now to the doxa, the question is: what do the different “subjects” represent to the teenager undergoing teaching and which are presented to him like different disciplines? In primary education these subjects do not exist, it is the same teacher who inculcates all knowledge. But once entered into the college, the teenager has to deal with thirty-six Professors. Why? Because the subjects are the materialisation of variation, not of speech, but of knowledge. You realize that to vary the knowledge (i.e. to create differentiated subjects), or to vary the speech (i.e. to introduce foreign languages) is strictly the same thing.
If you understand that it is not a question of making the young adults effective in the practice of a language nor to make them scholars in the various subjects, you see the monstrous nonsense of the overload of the “programs” and the schedules: nearly forty hours of weekly courses in the second cycle, and sometimes more, whereas one needs no more than half that. It is not the “mammoth” which it is necessary to reduce, but programs and schedules, which could be done with less expenses. Here again, the professors could split their work into two half-days. And then instead of the parents being anxious, especially the parents who did not pursue their studies: “So then, are you passing into fifth year?”. This “passage” would no longer have any importance: take simply that which amuses the teenager: he will be trained in what amuses him. But if you impose work on him while saying: “Later… ”. But if he has to wait, constantly, he will never get into it! Whereas if he likes the computer games, painting or crosswords, then he will be devoted to it! Perhaps I go a little far, but … despite everything!
To take it maybe to the extreme, the contents do not have any importance. If you are convinced by this, then all is possible, I want to say that all the possibilities, all the adaptations to social systems in full change are possible. A schoolboy of a “good background”, as one says will tend to do what their parents tell him to do (for example Ancient Greek), because they studied it themselves; perhaps another will study mechanics: in both cases the problem is the same one; the essence is not to make mechanics or Greek scholars, but to make them intelligent. So that what teachers should offer is, basically, a review of speeches and subjects, simply to add variety, while the mission of the civic monitor will be to educate the variety of the laws, in other words with the arbitrarity, as with the negotiation of this arbitrarity which has as a name the art to compose.
The composition, it should be heard in its ambiguity: We say: “It is necessary to learn how to compose with another”, i.e. to not dispute with them. But that also remains true from the point of view of the “French essay” which formerly consisted in putting ideas in order, constructing a text with a debate, and concluding it. So that if, at the elementary school, the effort to be made is by the teacher, here, the effort required is from the high-school pupil or schoolboy insofar as he educates itself with the arbitrarity, by receiving the advice of their monitor. I said to you, previously that French, at school, is not a subject: “it is an atmosphere”, a nebula. However if the only job to be done in the secondary school is to learn how to compose, it acts as a French duty, whatever the subject. You understand, consequently, the error of those who say: “There is the French teacher, the teacher of maths, the teacher of history, etc”. There is only one important character, it is this monitor, cruelly absent from our system, insofar as the only thing for which it is necessary to train the young adults is the composition: in natural science, one talks of mushrooms, in history, you discuss Charlemagne and in maths, the equilateral triangle. Well, consider that, in all three cases, they are French exercises.
And I will add that the first of the civic virtues, that to which one should involve the young adult from the sixth class is humour, and thereby the detachment concerning the statutes – i.e. with the affiliations -, and compared to the roles – i.e. with the trades. Here, therefore, is defined the second cardinal virtue of the citizen, to tell the truth inseparable from the humour, which is elegance (or “distinction” within the meaning of the XVII century and Bourdieu). Because, what is elegance? It is this form of intelligence (it is not by chance that the two words have the same root) which leads us, permanently, not to identify us with the costume that we endorse, to maintain awake in us, constantly, the conscience that we are ourselves the manipulators, so to speak, of our own strings. Elegance, at the root, is to be at the same time onstage and offstage, and this elegance is by no means a gift, but the product of a civic education.
So that the constant worry of the teachers (I am not talking about Professors!), at the same time as they should develop in those entrusted to them the establishment of the bond with the other and service towards others, would be to exert, at the same time, on their ground, the capacity to release some of oneself, i.e. to encourage them gradually, not so much to adhere – that, they can do in general, spontaneously – but not to be slaves of their adhesions, i.e. to reflect on them. All the difficulty is there, that one will help them to surmount if one takes care to develop in them the critical spirit, the direction of the relativity of all the human things in general, and social things in particular. The role of the monitor would be, on this account, to help the teenagers to reach this integral relativism which makes that, no matter what one says and thinks, and who that one is, one can say, think and be differently. At the same time, it would be a formidable lesson of tolerance, because if you learn, at the same time, and that others are different from you, and that you, yourselves are different from the different ones, you are well obliged to support these others, if you want to support yourselves!
I will add that, in this task, the monitoring could be replaced, as from the college, by a one year stay in a foreign family. It would be the ideal means, of course, the most effective.!
Lastly, I will say to you, to finish, that this elegance is what makes it possible to avoid social conformism under another aspect, which is the incapacity to make oneself singular. If you accept that training a citizen is not training a sheep, it acts then to train a “bad” citizen, which is what Alain had seen when he affirmed that the “spirit of rebellion is all good”, Alain who redirected the meaning of the Kantian formula of “ungesellige Geselligkeit”, i.e. of “uncivil civility”.
There is, actually, something which has always annoyed not only Kant, but also all his successors. They said: “Certainly, there is Geselleschaft, i.e. a defined society as a group of people who get along, but there are always spoilsports”. If they were these spoilsports who were the founders and even, I was going to say, the true “teachers” of the considered society, this time, not as it results from the acculturation of our function of reproduction in statute and role – i.e. in class and trade -, but as it is history, in so much, in other words, which it is access to sedition, founder of any society? Some, you know, dream of a society where this ungesellige Geselligkeit, precisely, would be completely evacuated. But it is the dream of what? Quite simply of returning to the herd, i.e., ultimately, with Fascism or totalitarianism quite simply because one would obtain, by the resolution of this latent sedition that defines any society, a return to gregarity. It never should be forgotten, indeed, that it is this capacity of sedition which is properly human and constitutive of the citizenship. In other words, to educate the citizen, it is primarily to educate it with this dialectical divergence and convergence, sedition and constitution, difference and consensus, dialectical which, far from excluding humour and elegance, develops the capacity for it. In other words, I do not claim at all that one should not “engage”, as some said at one time, nor to even revolt, even make revolution, since at the basis it is that which, sociologically, defines us as human beings. Yes, but if it is true that “a holy sadness is a sad saint”, as wrote François de Sales, it is not less true that a revolutionary is a sad revolutionary, who does not take the things “cum grano salis” (with a point of humour).
Here is the deep sense of the words of Rabelais for which “laughing is human nature”. It is the same thing to say that, man being man, everything in him is initially and primarily ridiculous.