Publish at March 10 2021 Updated September 20 2023
The world of training is full of stories that we pass on to each other and that illustrate major pedagogical principles. These stories crystallize around characters, objects or even concepts. They form a collective mythology that is shared and told regularly, consolidating our representations. In this article, I offer you a partial, disorganized and subjective sample of the stories that weave a mythology.
Let's start with a true myth. The story of Pygmalion is presented by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. The author tells us that this sculptor fell in love with one of his works. Aphrodite understands the power of this love and gives life to the sculpture, which becomes Galatea and marries Pygmalion.
Pygmalion represents the creative power par excellence. In education, the concept of thePygmalion effect encompasses a whole series of experiments. These consist of randomly indicating to teachers that some of their new pupils have a very good level. The teachers then pay more attention, give more credit, assess regularly... and the randomly selected pupils actually end their school year with good assessments. Conversely, the Golem effect means that when teachers have negative preconceptions about certain groups of students or pupils, they reduce the quality of their support, and consequently the pupils are more likely to find themselves in difficulty. This is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In the stories shared by pedagogues, many evoke decisive encounters between students and teachers. One thinks of Monsieur Germain, Albert Camus's teacher, who believed in him and managed to convince his parents. Or Georges Izambard, the 22-year-old rhetoric teacher who encouraged Rimbaud and introduced him to the Parnassians.
These stories remind us of the importance of looking at pupils and students with a kindly eye. They show that, in addition to imparting knowledge or developing know-how, the teacher works on self-esteem, self-confidence, building a life project and a sense of self-efficacy. They encourage us to see what's best and most promising in everyone, rather than pointing out difficulties, shortcomings and weaknesses.
Let's stay with antiquity. Here we are in 400 BC. Socrates wants to demonstrate that learning is about rediscovering the knowledge we already possess. To this end, he asks for one of the many slaves who accompany Meno. The slave has been chosen at random. He speaks Greek, and that's good enough. Socrates draws a square and asks him how to draw one with twice the area. The slave formulates erroneous hypotheses, Socrates shows him he's wrong, and finally, the anonymous slave arrives at the solution. A side of the new square must be traced from the diagonal of the first.
The reminiscence thesis probably doesn't have many followers any more. So what's the point of this story? It's undoubtedly that Socrates makes no distinction between the young man, who has no schooling and is at the very bottom of the social ladder, and his usual pupils, who come from wealthy Athenian families and are well educated. He lets the slave draw the lines himself. He is present, but in the lightest possible way. This affirmation of the equality of intelligences foreshadows Joseph Jacotot, the ignorant master whom Rancière helped to popularize.
Let's avoid arbitrariness, excessive emotion and immoderate violence. The history of education tenaciously cultivates the search for measured sanctions, be they rewards or punishments. The machines offered for sale by "President Schreber's" father are among the countless inventions that will make butt-kickings and swifts seem archaic.
Schreber was the first guinea pig for his father's inventions and educational theories. He became an eminent jurist... but it was Freud's monograph that made him famous. He suffered from paranoia, and his writings provide invaluable insight into this psychic disorder. A number of studies subsequent to that of the Viennese psychoanalyst have hypothesized a link between the father's clacking machines and the son's delusions.
This type of machine appears in a funnier way in "Les sous-doués passent le bac". A more dramatic version can be found in Milgram's experiment, in which the supposed guinea pig drawn at random receives electric shocks (fortunately fake) when he makes a mistake.
In 1780, English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham imagined a prison system in which a guard, virtually invisible to the inmates, could see the inside of each cell at a glance. At any moment, he or she could call in other guards to stop a behavior. Since 2015, training managers and platform publishers have been dreaming up thousands of cells, this time on a spreadsheet. In these cells, connection times, test results, numbers of attempts, cognitive preferences... which would enable algorithms to dose down to the milliliter a cocktail of training adapted to an individual, at a given moment, according to precise objectives.
It is said that prisoners incarcerated in the cells designed by Bentham sometimes suffered from mental disorders. Knowing that they were being observed day and night would have upset their equilibrium. On the other hand, we lack the hindsight and concrete experience to assess the effect on learners' well-being.
2008. Distance learning has become commonplace. But two Canadian researchers are about to shake up the rules. They offer a course entitled "Connectivism and Connective Knowledge" to over 2,000 students. But that's not the whole story. They broke the boundary between learners and instructors. Enrollees organize the content and develop the resources. The experience has been replicated many times. In France, we can cite Itypa, "Internet, tout y est pour apprendre", the first collaborative French-language Mooc offered in 2014.
The strength of Downes and Siemens lies above all in the fact that they have turned our vision of competence and knowledge on its head. My competence is what I know how to do in a given context, but also what I can mobilize. If, faced with a problem, I can call on a friend to help me, my competence is enhanced. If I don't have a friend to call, but I'm able to find the information, organize it and format it, my competence is even greater! Knowing where to find new information and knowing how to organize, prioritize and connect it is more important than the knowledge we have accumulated.
The practical consequences for training are numerous. It's all about developing collaborative activities, and in particular the search for, selection and shaping of knowledge. Connectivist-inspired moocs have encouraged the opening of blogs, Scoop-it and Twitter accounts. This approach also encourages learning to extend beyond the classroom.
We're all for effort, endurance and tenacity. But frankly, we wouldn't mind a time-saving method. We're always on the lookout for tricks that will enable us to skip stages and learn in a few hours what previous generations took years to master. Why play sports, run or lift weights, when electrical stimulators can exercise our muscles, while we sip a soda on our sofa.
"I'll talk in your sleep and you'll remember what I say without even realizing it". Langelot Secret Agent, Green Library - Vladimir Volkoff - 1965
When taken to extremes, painless learning in some fictions translates into learning while you sleep. Langelot develops knowledge while he sleeps, others learn under hypnosis, and still others believe they will become fluent in a language in three minutes a day with an app.
For some years now, the promises of artificial intelligence seem to have been fulfilled. Ever since Watson answered medical students' questions on forums, there have been reports of acceleration. Teachers' eyes sparkle. They'd all like to see automatically corrected papers and algorithms for individualized remediation in their lifetime. Tomorrow, they say. But when is tomorrow?
In the meantime, concrete results are impressive. An artificial intelligence system may falter for a while in differentiating between a shiba inu and a coolie. But it learns fast, and when properly trained, it makes fewer mistakes than a human and ends up giving the dog's name. Facial recognition is apparently less complex than correcting an essay. But let's wait. It's due tomorrow.
Places play an important role in educational myths. Think of Aristotle's lycée, Plato's academy, Epicurus' garden or Montaigne's library in a tower. But if we have to make a choice, it's Giulia Civita Franceschi's boat that will grab our attention.
We are in Naples, in .... Many children, abandoned or neglected by their parents, live by doing odd jobs or committing crimes. They are invisible. The sculptor Vincenzo Gemito, himself abandoned at birth, created touching images of these young fishermen and paved the way for picturesque depictions. The reality is harsher. And nothing is done to help these children out of their condition.
Giulia Civita Franceschi opened a training ship from 1913 to 1923. A corvette built in 1869 and christened Caracciolo, life on board was organized around values and rhythmic activities. Mutual aid, participation and solidarity are emphasized. Children wear uniforms and receive basic training. Some of them even achieve a good academic level, and can go on to further studies. Around 750 children will pass through this school. The ship's captain, nicknamed the Montessori of the sea, has above all implemented a pedagogy based on action, experimentation, participation and collaboration.
This list is, of course, subjective. It oscillates between mythology and a cabinet of curiosities. It shows that, beyond concepts, we build our representations on narratives, shared stories, metaphors, fictional and everyday objects.
Illustrations: Frédéric Duriez
Resources :
On the notion of mythology :
Roland Barthes - Mythologies - éditions du Seuil - 1957
https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/mythologies-roland-barthes/9782757841754
Jérôme Garcin (dir.) - Nouvelles mythologies - éditions du Seuil - 2007
https://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/nouvelles-mythologies-jerome-garcin/9782757850107
Master Médiation interculturelle et traduction dans l'espace germanique et nordique de Sorbonne Université (Faculté des Lettres) "Les mythologies de Roland Barthes - 60 ans déjà". online December 2017, accessed March 6, 2021
https://mastermegen.wordpress.com/2017/12/27/les-mythologies-de-roland-barthes-60-ans-deja/
On artificial intelligence and image recognition :
Marine Chassagnon - Huffington Post - Chihuahua ou muffin? october 2016, accessed March 6, 2021
https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2016/03/11/jeu-chien-deviner-patisserie_n_9437528.html
On the training ship:
Frédéric Duriez - the innovations of Italian pedagogy in the early 20th century - January 2017
https://cursus.edu/11090/les-innovations-de-la-pedagogie-italienne-au-debut-du-xxeme-siecle
On the panopticon
Michel Foucault - Surveiller et punir - Gallimard - 1975
http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Tel/Surveiller-et-punir
You might also like:
Metacognition at school: useful learning
Reflecting on one's thinking methods is what metacognition proposes. This global analytical approach is seen as an educational strategy that helps all types of learners. So why is it not more widely adopted?
Digital acceleration and cognitive overload: can we really learn under pressure?
Digital acceleration is transforming learning conditions, but at the cost of increasing cognitive overload. We now have technologies capable of facilitating access to knowledge as never before, yet the very conditions for its appropriation are deteriorating. The challenge is to design pedagogical systems that are cognitively sustainable.
Our forgotten bodies in the metaverse
Immersive realities quickly clash with the physical reality of the players. Example of the movie Cargo: the travelers think they are arriving on a new planet, but they are asleep in an artificial dream that makes them believe they have arrived at their destination when in fact they are stored in containers like goods... And this reality has no way back because their bodies deteriorate with time. What to think of the Metaverse?
Mental preparation: the element not to be neglected
For decades, the sports world has known the importance of mental preparation. From amateur athletes to Olympians, everyone knows that a large part of performance is played with the head. The school environment could also benefit from these strategies. In fact, mental preparation services offered to students and teachers are beginning to appear.
The development of key competencies in the workplace
This thesis attempts to establish a link between key competencies and employability. It combines theoretical research and an empirical survey of a sample of employees who have undergone training to develop key skills.
