By XLS
What matters at university is not what I am but what I know.
Knowledge mapping and the individual
The foundations of the University are based on a mission cited by the CNRS on its website: "to broaden the field of knowledge". This means that the advanced cutting edge of research obeys nothing other than a philosophical imperative. This great latitude is buttressed by a principle: that of progress. And the researchers, appointed to their posts directly by the President of the Republic or by the Prime Minister, are independent of any hierarchy.
They form a team and organize their research according to funding sources that are either regional, national via the National Research Agency or European via the European Agency. This funding serves as an incentive policy, in the absence of a planned coordination policy.
Research disciplines (mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc.) are the subject of a global description that students must learn to master in stages before contributing their own stone to the building. This tiering of the discipline corresponds to something that everyone knows: the diploma.
The diploma is the certification by teacher-researchers that the student's profile corresponds to a certain level of elevation in knowledge based on common tests which allow the levels of students to be compared with each other, of course, but above all: to gauge them in relation to the standard meter of the quantity of knowledge acquired.
In other words, the distribution of degrees in disciplines in the University is based on a kind of knowledge mapping that guides Research and innovation on the one hand and structures the training of studies on the other by imposing in particular a disciplinary framework. These research areas are present within the Universities in components themselves linked to Training and Research and are represented at the national level by the National Council of Universities which is itself divided into sections, into academies by discipline where elected or appointed representatives sit.
…and the entire chain of secondary education is therefore linked to this mapping of knowledge and its structure.
The entire field of knowledge within the CNRS is divided into disciplines or groups of disciplines which correspond to the sections of the National Committee of scientific research.
But be careful, this division, fixed by ministerial decree, is regularly adapted to the evolution of science and disciplinary fields by a reorganization of the number of sections, and their titles.
This organization, apparently very dense, sets in particular the expectations of the first diploma marking entry into higher education: the baccalaureate, the tests of which already have a disciplinary coloring. The content of the baccalaureate tests is in some way linked to the organization of Research, and the entire chain of secondary education is therefore linked to this mapping of knowledge and its structure.
Thus, the disciplines set a threshold of knowledge per diploma and the State arbitrates that the level of training of a teacher in each of the disciplines is played out to a certain degree by the elevation of the student in his field. The tests and their content are the subject of a consensus between the National Education - represented by the General Inspectorate, and the University.
The subversion of secondary education
This explains how the emergence of studies in the field of human sciences weighs heavily in the short term on the organization of the school. Indeed, if the self-proclaimed "studies" have been thus constituted, it is above all because they are transversal to the disciplines: one can be in porn studies and be a teacher of Modern Literature or American civilization.
This deliberately maintained vagueness leads teacher-researchers to relate to these studies to be an activist for their studies on one side and on the other, to intervene as a literature teacher at different levels of diplomas, up to that of Masters of teaching. And this is why we see the flourishing of course titles in Bachelor's courses that no longer have anything to do with Literature in the sense that Antoine Compagnon or Georges Molinié gave to this word in their courses.
Thus, in some universities in Bachelor's degree, we see the emergence of teaching areas "Literature, societies, ecosystems" whose aim is, as the brochure explains to us:
To draw practical lessons from the theoretical contributions of gender, racial and colonial studies, whose work has shown the domination of the epistemological and artistic field by white heterosexual men" and adds that "starting from the observation that the canon constructed by literary history silences and makes invisible authors belonging to minority categories thus relegated to the margins of literary space", the course proposes a program of reading texts "written by authors racy.es issue.es of colonial history.
License Brochure
Or another course devoted to medieval literature in the same field seeks, through the reading of Christine de Pizan, to "question the notion of genre (gender) (sic).
From the moment these fields become surreptitiously institutionalized by the militancy of teachers, it is not impossible, as is the case Les Échos in an article from May 2019 to affirm that there are many professional opportunities for Masters in gender:
"After the adoption of this new definition by international institutions, the "gender" perspective and the question of gender equality have entered the "bureaucratic engineering" of a large number of actors (international organizations, national bodies in charge of public policy, NGOs, companies)."
https://start.lesechos.fr/apprendre/universites-ecoles/masters-en-gender-studies-la-ruee-des-etudiants-tres-diplomes-1175508
Little by little, the mapping of areas of expertise is being disrupted by this emergence of studies on the front of the stage, which weigh on the curricula of future teachers. And this is how we are witnessing gradually to the assumed demand of young certified teachers for inclusive teaching, or decolonial in secondary school classes when it is no longer a question of positive knowledge stemming from an identifiable discipline, but of a moralizing discourse.
There is even a considerable weakening of formal skills in the disciplinary field that young graduates are supposed to be dealing with. It is no surprise that we now find teachers making conjugation mistakes but who practice inclusive writing.
The society of tomorrow is being built in today's tutorial classes and lecture halls...
