Gaston Ternes

It is an affirmation that everyone today signs with both hands, here in the country and also abroad. But it hardly goes beyond this observation. How to promote practical teaching? What priorities should be set in school reforms? Gaston Ternes addresses this question today in his carte blanche.

 

Yes, our country needs skilled craftsmen! This is an acute and widespread problem at home and abroad. Companies have a massive shortage of qualified personnel. This makes me think of the famous phrase by American researcher Michael Huberman: “Everything has been said, everything remains to be done”.

There are initiatives in schools to bring young people closer to crafts and entrepreneurship. But these remain isolated initiatives such as internships, information days on careers, company interventions in classes. There is, however, a lack of continuity.

An upgrade of practical training is, in my opinion, linked to 3 conditions:

First, the choice of vocational subjects should not be made on the basis of failure in languages and mathematics. This is why we need “schools for all students”. “Inclusion” is the key word, not “segmentation” or early specialization. At the same time, this means an upgrading of programs in professional training: Would it not be important to offer students subjects in the fields of culture, art and social issues?

Secondly, each student, from primary school to the end of secondary school, should have a wide range of “practical” lessons available to them, in order to be able to test their talent and desire from the start. Finally and above all to also learn the gestures and know-how that we need on a daily basis, whether in private or professional life.

Third, the absurd opposition between “manual” and “intellectual” should be immediately stopped. Today, a farmer has to understand how the ecosystem works and I only trust a surgeon if I am sure he is also good at manual work! The hierarchy that thrives in people's minds between different artisanal specialties is also absurd. Whatever the specialty, what matters in the end is the quality of the execution!

This is why it is important to allow each child, each young person, a real immersion in craft activity.

It is commendable that UNESCO, in its GEQAF program “General Education System Quality Analysis/Diagnosis Framework”, has recently made this question of an adapted curriculum a central theme. There are good reasons to believe that this is where the answers to the education crisis lie.