Mandatory School?

What a mess! While researchers and doctors are struggling and scrambling on the question of the transmission of Covid-19 by children^[1]In France, doctors think that children don’t transmit much Covid while a recent Berlin study casts doubt on the fact that young minors can carry a high viral load. DESHAYES Benoît, Coronavirus chez l’enfant : nouvelle étude inquiétante sur leur contamination et leur contagiosité (Coronavirus in children: disturbing new study on their contamination and their contagiousness), May 5, 2020. [Consulted May 6, 2020], available at: https://www.linternaute.com/actualite/guide-vie-quotidienne/2493091-coronavirus-chez-l-enfant -new-worries-about-their-contamination-and-their-conagiosity/, while companies (at least those who have been negatively impacted by Corona) are trying to get back to business while out of stock of glass panels, when artists are crying to make their voices heard by deaf politics and while vacations by the sea or the mountain are falling apart, the Minister of National Education, Mr. Jean-Michel Blanquer, tries to solve a traditional geometry problem: squaring the circle.

In the small town of Jouy-en-Josas (Paris Region), a videoconference system has been installed, at least in a primary school, which has enabled children to follow, at least, some education given with courage and patience by the teachers, guarantors of one of the foundations of our democracy: compulsory schooling. But there is talk that this teleconference tool be questioned because the conditions for resuming classes are such that the objective is more to babysit a small minority of children (the priority kids, that is to say those whose parents provide a vital function for our daily lives) than to actually provide them instruction.

According to testimonies from parents of pupils, both in public and private establishments in the Western Paris Region, several schools, colleges or high schools have not benefited at all from this videoconference system, leaving the children and parents left on their own. These same parents are gradually resuming their professional activities (for those who had been forced to stop their job) in addition to their parental duties. Furthermore, another square added to this squaring of the circle, how can fathers and mothers ensure their employment in the workplace while maintaining the education of their children or teenagers? What to do, too, for households who recently arrived in France and have only an imperfect knowledge of the Molière’s language or, even more difficult (but less funny), that of our administration?

The answer is simple: today’s teleconferencing tools. Perhaps it would be time to accentuate local partnerships between the public and the private sectors – while ensuring that the choice of this or that company is made on skills and not on a “cronyism” basis – in order to provide simple and rapid local technological responses. The problem is urgent: it is a question of not sacrificing a school year, and therefore the training of a generation of students, and beyond, to continue to develop an ideal of instruction for all, so that everyone can give the best of oneself.

(Instruction pour tous : Instruction for All)