Publish at April 12 2022 Updated April 21 2022
The Tao invites its followers to humility with these words, "Newborn, man is supple and frail; dead, he is rigid and hard. [...] Solidity and rigidity are the companions of death; suppleness and weakness are the companions of life"
While the Tao evokes weakness, this article will prefer the notion of fragility. Fragility evokes brokenness, the rift, and isn't it the rift that lets the light through rather than a solid, impervious wall?
Below the apparent fragility of water, a plant, or nascent life lies the extraordinary power to adapt and flow through the world. The word fragility is of the same origin as "fracture," both terms dating back to 13th century French. "Fragile" derives from frangere, which means "to break" and yields fraction and fragment.
In an age of uncertainty and doubt, the stakes of fragility are immense. Dethier uses three images to describe contemporary social fragilities for us.
These social frailties weigh on our lives. We make do with our limits of consciousness, our desires and perspectives, our capacities to assume or not our singularities.
That which does not kill me makes me stronger asserts the philosopher Nietzsche in "Twilight of the Idols." Going through our frailties would help us find our light. Fragility holds in common with resilience this principle of bending, of twisting, like a reed that ultimately withstands the wind even as one who is strong as an oak eventually breaks and is blown away.
The leader, the manager, the trainer who opens up about his or her frailties to others allows them by example to do the same allows everyone to expose their difficulties and learn from them. And therein lies the beginning of a possible help to progress.
This model of behavior removes the illusion of perfection due to others and engages more humanity, more sincerity. It brings beings closer together through this fragility in common that instead of being hidden supports each other. Since my boss, my trainer, my parent is fragile I too can be fragile and exposing it for all to see I can gather their help in transforming my fragility into something nourishing for my life.
It is fashionable to value the fragilities we overcome. But, pedagogy of error could be harmful to the fragile. If trial-and-error learning is popular, fragility could cause damage to learners in need of guidance. For them, it would only amplify the difficulty of situating themselves or understanding instructions. Such a pedagogy would accentuate the split between students who are prepared and willing to engage in learning and others who are ignorant of the issues, uses and expectations of school.
These expectations that make Roger-François Gauthier, former inspector general of the French National Education say that the school is "turned towards a transmission under tension of formatted knowledge, adept at modes of evaluation that easily eliminate fragile students."
This is why, depending on the audience, the pedagogue will guard against too many losses of reference points that could definitively lead fragile learners astray in terms of their foundations, their motivations, or their resources. He will choose the paths according to where the learners are at rather than according to his theoretical beliefs.
In the transactional analysis work developed by Eric Berne, one of the little voices that turns in our heads in a subliminal message is "Be strong." Men are particularly on the receiving end of this anti-fragility injunction with all the associated consequences (burdensome social roles, domineering behaviors, hidden suffering).
Nicholas Taleb describes antifragility as a "property of systems that become stronger when exposed to stressors, shocks, volatility, noise, mistakes, errors, attacks, or failures." While the concept of resilience means an ability to absorb, a stress or shock and return to a previous state, antifragility instead feeds on the energy, the intention that affects it to strengthen itself.
To learn one must certainly deal with one's strengths and frailties, which presupposes a self-knowledge that school can reinforce.
Sources
The viewpoint of Roger-François Gauthier, former Inspector General of National Education https://www.inegalites.fr/Une-ecole-qui-elimine-trop-souvent-les-plus-fragiles https://www.cairn.info/revue-le-coq-heron-2010-4-page-97.htm
Toutéduc. Pedagogical notebooks. Error pedagogy risks breaking some fragile students http://www.touteduc.fr/fr/archives/id-4954-la-pedagogie-de-l-erreur-risque-de-briser-certains-eleves-fragiles-cahiers-pedagogiques
Transactional analysis https://analysetransactionnelle.fr/p-m_mme_sois_fort?msclkid=afc9e277acca11ecaaf84937f47c42ad
Wikipedia. Nicholas Taleb https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb
Le Coz, P. (2015). Coaching, a symptom of fragility of the social bond. Studies, , 31-41. https://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-2015-4-page-31.htm
General culture. Hokusai's Great Kaganawa Wave https://www.laculturegenerale.com/grande-vague-kanagawa-hokusai-analyse/?msclkid=4cb396f4accb11eca038643d0273fd58
Dethier, R. (2013). Fragilities and social cohesion. Les Cahiers Internationaux de Psychologie Sociale, 99-100, 409-424. https://doi.org/10.3917/cips.099.0409
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