Publish at November 27 2012 Updated September 12 2024
Reading the number of wishes, desires, complaints and suggestions found in various educational blogs can be perplexing. Obviously many teachers are very competent and yet not everything seems to work so well...
Generically we observe that in the environment of competent people things work and in the environment of incompetent people things work poorly, badly, or not at all.
Competent people not only know how to perform specific tasks but are also able to choose or control the environment that allows them to perform those tasks. This is a comprehensive definition of competence, incorporating all the nuances related to domains of practice and standards.
In education, a teacher who can control the discipline of his classroom may be considered more competent than one who, despite all his knowledge and credentials, would be unable to do so.
But that same competent teacher, immersed in a disruptive environment, will have to deploy his competence far beyond the walls of his classroom to come to terms with teaching effectively. He may even have to become involved at the administrative or pedagogical level or in the animation of a parent or teacher committee to come to control the environment necessary for his professional practice.
If he can do this, despite all the difficulties, he keeps his flame; if, on the contrary, the pitfalls and threats (administrative sanctions, social reactions, budgetary hassles) are so numerous that he withdraws within the four walls of his classroom, his morale will decrease as much as his cynicism will increase. The result is a competent but depressed person, and this state is directly related to the control of his environment, control that is denied to him.
All sorts of ministerial, administrative, financial, or ideological justifications can be invoked to justify this state of affairs, but the result is that professors, schools, and institutions are denied their competence to exercise control over their environment, a competence that they have nevertheless been granted.
In online training we are witnessing the same phenomena. The dynamism of most of the universities or organizations that are attempting the online adventure is constantly hampered by laws from another century, political considerations that have nothing to do with the quality of education, such as the preservation of a bitterly negotiated administrative mode, and generally by the general inertia of a system in which everyone's competencies are drastically limited to tasks.
The solution is self-evident: if the prerogatives of a central administration are to guide and direct the whole toward the achievement of coherent, mission-serving goals, it is in its interest to leave control of the environment and execution to those whose competence has been recognized.
What if 12-year-old students could choose to take some of their courses remotely? What is the practical justification for preventing them from doing so?
Pushing the logic a little further, the moment we recognize students' competence to study, we must give them control over their study environment, which includes both how they are organized and how they go about it. Otherwise we get the same phenomena: obedient students to be sure, but cynical and unengaged.
What happens if we give students more control?
Then you get a school that is directed from within, where the administration, faculty, and students work toward the same end and exercise full competence and control over their environment, which is a far cry from a decreed school.
This recaptures the true spirit of scholê (leisure time devoted to study) and, more importantly, results in students who are truly competent and operate in an environment where everyone's competence is exercised in a concrete way.
Manifesto for Competent Schools - Presses de l'Université du Québec
Reclaiming the Prestige of the Teaching Profession
Photo:Someone Else Shavar Ross / Foter
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