School

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani links the school to equality and to access to knowledge. Speaking at the École normale supérieure, founded by the Convention, he defines it as what bridges the gap between equality in law and equality in fact1. He draws on Hegel against play-based pedagogy, starting from children's desire to grow up2. During the lockdown, he connects the destruction of the school to "absolute non-knowledge": the ruling class has an interest in preventing knowledge from reaching the great number, and a school that taught, with Hegel, that all are free would threaten those in power3. He sees in a directive asking teachers to identify pupils' distrust of the executive a form of surveillance aimed at criticism4. In 2023, he reads Cheikh Hamidou Kane's L'Aventure ambiguë, in which the Grande Royale sends the children to the white people's school, whose science raises a barricade against the chaos of the outside world. From this he draws a defence of the school, of science and of progress against degrowth, and recalls that leaders of the liberation struggles, such as Ben Bella or Ho Chi Minh, were trained by the colonial system5.

1. 1#5.2 L’Odyssée du philosophe : La pensée révolutionnaire21 Nov 2018
2. 2Hegel et les gilets jaunes (1ère partie)13 Feb 2019
3. 3#4 • Les Attelé(e)s de la confinitude11 Apr 2020
4. 4#7 • Les Attelé(e)s de la confinitude5 May 2020
5. 5La mondanité chez Clouscard - Le choc des mondes ?9 Jul 2023

Introduction produced automatically from the 5 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.