Education

I do not know whether you have noticed the difference in the form of education and school instruction seen between consecutive generations. Each generation admits that the education and school instruction received in its era were better than those given to the new generations. Each dor had a different way of dressing, a different form of social relations, a different taste in art, which is noticed most in the field of songs or dances. Speaking of dor, I believe we should think of the generation of the Covid-19 pandemic — whether this generation will recover the loss of school instruction, or whether these two years will have no importance at all in their professional careers. Apart from the difference in education, let us not forget that there always existed a difference of thinking between the generations. My father's dor, mine, and my son's had no common relation. When it is said that in our time we knew better than those of today, I do not believe it is always very correct, because today we learn many things from the young. But the saying 'If the old could, if the young knew' is also a reality we must respect.

Comparing the generations of past centuries, we do not see a great difference in personal or family relations. Nor do we see a difference in the behaviour of family members. There did not exist, as today, the freedom of young people who go to study in another country and stay there, or go to live and work in another place. The young of that time, barely finishing primary school, already had to work with their fathers or uncles to continue the family profession. Today we must finish the lycée, the university, the master's degree, military service, and begin to work seriously. Who thought 50 years ago that everything would be arranged with a mobile phone, with a machine called a 'computer' that directs our life according to what we order it.

The difference in education between generations was an important subject for the famous Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, who wrote a book on 'The Crisis in Education'. She says that teachers should be seen as the 'representatives of the world' before the new generations, and education should not be seen as giving a vision of the future to the young. For her, education must be the way of seeing the world as it is. On the other hand, the American psychologist and pedagogue Jerome Bruner says that pupils must be prepared for the uncertainty of the future, from the first classes of school, working on socially live questions. Contrary to Hannah Arendt, Jerome Bruner insists that the school help the pupil develop the capacity to ask the why, the wherefore, the how, and to find the answer to the question. So that in both cases, the confidence of adults in youth is at the centre of education. For Hannah Arendt, confidence means that youth must have the knowledge and the capacity to stand before the problems of the world the day they become adults. For Bruner, confidence is that youth, through education, must take part in the discussions of these problems and form a collaboration. Today the question is whether education and instruction should transfer knowledge, or teach how to acquire this knowledge.

The famous American billionaire Elon Musk began to invest in education with a programme that could not be imagined until today. In Los Angeles, on the campus of 'SpaceX', Elon Musk and Joshua Dahn built a school to give pupils the chance to learn the sense and the ability to struggle with problems like those of life. Elon Musk said that 'the things we teach children in schools do not have great sense, because they will never make use of them'. For this reason Musk and Dahn concentrated on education based on experiences. At the beginning the classes had only the children of Elon Musk and the children of the engineers of 'SpaceX'. Today the school has more than 5,500 active pupils and thousands waiting on the waiting list. If this programme has great success, we believe that all countries will want to adapt to the same system. Source: Prof. Philippe Forey