Do or Die: introducing French Education’s struggle

“Those who refuse to embrace will suffer it” — quite a sharp comment for a government official. In his talk on educational Technology in June 10th, 2013, the French former minister of education’s tone is rather fatalistic.

The reason for so much drama is that in France, education is historically defined as the process through which citizens are born and fostered. The French Education has always been a Republican enterprise: students used to graduate from school emblazoned with the status of citizenship, and the institutions’ purpose was to train people to become patriotic civil servants.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

School is the window of the 3 Republican pillars:

Liberty - recognised as a human right by the Declaration of 26 August 1789, it is the fundamental value that puts a man in the subject position to citizenship status.
Equality is about being equal before the law is the pith and marrow of the French education system.
Fraternity appeared in the Republican motto in 1848 but it took until 1946 for it to be affirmed in the Constitution

2015: Different world, same institutions

Globalisation kicked in and with the expansion of capitalism, the political dominance has translated on the economic field. Education has now become a liberal market, disrupted on all levels by the new technology revolution. The emergence of new actors that aim to equip millennials and Gen Zs with knowledge, know-how and skills required on the labour market.
Training an efficient workforce has become a key to soft power and the most innovative countries are those where start-ups are incorporated within an edtech ecosystem.
Yet, French Education still considers civic values as mutually exclusive with Edtech, failing to address the new needs generated by globalisation.This open door for innovators to fulfil people’s expectation results in a completely independent free market where innovative individuals use technology to disrupt the classic educational landscape.

Welcome to a series of articles analysing the tension between the weight of the Educative Institution’s legacy and their urge to innovate in order to survive. Let’s explore the growing gap between the French Education and the reality of the workplace, analyse the clash between public authorities and edtech disruptors and debate whether faithfulness to our Republican values is a blocker to innovation.