Teenagers at school

Philippe Meirieu wrote a chapter for Cultures adolescentes, published in 2008 by Editions Autrement. His text is freely available on his website.

In this chapter, Philippe Meirieu discusses the complicated relationship between schools and teenagers. Today, schools see the arrival of "teenagers" as an invasion of "barbarians" who are shattering their principles. But it wasn't always this way: up until around 1968, schools perfectly integrated "rebellious" teenagers, and even gave them the means to express their revolt. This was because the young people of the time were not in revolt against school culture, but against social culture. The "rebellious" or breakaway thinkers were often excellent students.

Today, however, the divorce between a large proportion of teenagers and their schools has been consummated. Meirieu sees several reasons for this:

• School separates "children" from "adults", those who learn and those who teach. This separation continues until the end of high school, and even during the first years of higher education. This, at a time when young people are undergoing a period of mutation, even migration from one state to another. Nothing in the school system takes this change into account.

• The school offers only objective knowledge, detached from the existence of those who are supposed to acquire it. This distancing is obviously positive, insofar as it allows us to open up to the world, put our own experiences into perspective and relate them to those of others. But adolescents find it difficult to distance themselves in this way, because they lack the support they need to do so.

• Society produces a "youth culture" that is largely relayed by merchants who see young people as a highly lucrative market. This culture values the indifferent/aggressive profile of young people when it comes to school knowledge. The manifestations of this culture reject the languages valued in the school environment: tags, mangas, rap, gothic culture...

As it seems unthinkable to leave teenagers at the school gates, P. Meirieu suggests a number of ways in which the educational institution (and especially high schools) can take better account of teenagers' aspirations and abilities:

• Increase their participation. At present, high-school students have access to a wide range of bodies to represent them in the school organization, but they have no say in what happens during class. P. Meirieu suggests engaging students in a dialogue on learning methods, working with them on a question that concerns them all: how can we learn better?

• Rebalance work time and listening time in lycées. In the classroom, students spend their time listening to their teachers, and are not very active. P. Meirieu points out two errors here: on the one hand, they have never learned to listen, so we need to teach them; on the other, we need to stop putting off work (activity) to personal time, outside the school. Offer them complex, meaningful activities, which they can carry out alone or in groups. In short, learn by doing.

• Link school subjects to the great questions that have always inhabited humanity. Schools lack inspiration! And teenagers don't see the meaning of disciplines. So we need to link them to the fundamental questions that man asks himself in the world. Adolescence is precisely the period when these questions emerge (what is time? what is love? why do we all run towards death? do objects exist when I'm not looking at them? Etc.), it would be a pity not to show them that disciplinary knowledge answered them, before their schooling emptied them of their fundamental substance.

Here's a text in line with what we've come to expect from Meirieu: big ideas, breath of fresh air, sometimes with a slight tendency towards exaggeration: not all teenagers vomit school, and they acclimatize quite well, since most of them go on to take the Bac that allows them to leave... A stimulating read.

Teenagers at school: is it possible? Philippe Meirieu