Is pedagogy revolutionary?

Education is torn between two visions: preparing for a competitive world or fostering democracy in schools. In my view, true effectiveness lies in cooperation, making pedagogy an inherently revolutionary act.

Two Pedagogical Approaches

In The Invariant Pedagogical Principles by Célestin Freinet (1964), invariant number 27 states: “Tomorrow’s democracy is prepared by democracy in school. An authoritarian regime in school cannot train democratic citizens.”

There is a fundamental opposition between two pedagogical approaches:

• One that posits school as a place to prepare children and young people for a society whose rules—particularly its hierarchical system—must be understood to adapt to a harsh world.
• Another approach, Freinet’s, which argues that school is precisely where one experiences a truly democratic society, thus shaping future citizens who, as they grow, will perpetuate in their adult lives the democracy they lived and practiced in school.

The first approach—which I personally believe to be misguided—promises a form of social effectiveness for children. It appeals to parents worried about their children’s future, who believe that such a school will make their children ready, combative, and capable of holding their own in a world where one must first learn to fight and defeat others.

The Fantasy of Competition

This assumption is based on a representation of the world as a competitive space, modeled on the fantasy of commercial, capitalist, or sports competition. There is this idea that the world is made up of winners and losers, and that a good school is one that trains future winners—because if you’re not trained for it, you risk being crushed by those who were educated to prevail. This foolish rhetoric is even trotted out at the start of the academic year in most elite schools. It’s a very seductive vision. Yet, even within the worst capitalist enterprises, it has long been proven—since we are in the 21^st century, not the early 20^th during the industrial revolution—that effectiveness stems from a sense of purpose and employee empowerment, and in no way from their domination by elites who would treat them like workers in a Ford factory. We are far past that era.

It is true that the Fordist system was effective in its time, when human labor was still used as beast-of-burden work, purely mechanical. But this category of activity has long since been taken over by robots, except in some countries with appalling human exploitation, which we do not associate with our democracies.

Thus, even from a competitive worldview, the skills to be acquired in school are those that enable cooperation and complementarity. Because even if you are the most predatory CEO, you need to give meaning to your employees’ work so they stay motivated and productive, and so customers also find meaning in buying the products made this way. What underpins economic efficiency, even at the heart of capitalism, is the synergy of energies—meaning capacities for complementarity, not competition.

The very key to the most brutal capitalist system is not to destroy others but to rely on them to amplify one’s own production. Energy spent on destruction is energy wasted.

The Revolution of Complementarities

Take a simple example: competition in the media (TV, cinema, social networks). At first glance, one might think that those under the tyranny of ratings would seek to crush other media to carve out their place. In reality, the opposite is true: they have every interest in cooperating so that media as a whole attracts more viewers. Cooperation allows them to mutually increase their audiences. If they don’t cooperate, they’ll saw off the branch they’re all sitting on. It’s like Rue Sainte-Anne, near the Opéra in Paris, where about twenty Japanese restaurants coexist side by side. They don’t compete: their clustering creates overall appeal. People know that if they go to this street, they’ll find a Japanese restaurant to their taste. There’s a synergy effect.

Moreover, the world is constantly changing. To believe we can prepare children for the world as it is denies this change. It strips them of the ability to transform the world and adapt to it, whatever the desired direction—even within an extremely capitalist logic.

Therefore, in my view, pedagogy is necessarily revolutionary. Its role is to help students build themselves within a cooperative society, so they are fully capable, later on, of changing the world—meaning living in the movement of the world toward a future they will decide for themselves, in complete freedom.