It was responding to a controversy that started quietly a few weeks ago and which suddenly gained momentum with the alerts launched by several associations of mathematicians and other learned societies. What they denounce is the catastrophic effect, according to them, of the reform of the Bac, with the collapse of the teaching of mathematics in first and final. And an aggravating factor, with a spectacular decrease in the number of girls in this stream, the equivalent of the old S stream. largely erased from their schedule, sometimes representing only one hour per month.
It is also a fact that in two years of application of the reform, girls have gone from nearly 50% of the workforce in S classes to around 40% in equivalent classes today.
Jean-Michel Blanquer disputes a decline in this discipline
His argument in substance: yes, there are fewer students who follow a reinforced teaching of maths, but those who do are more motivated, and they are better. So it’s a winner. He also points out that students who intend to do medicine no longer necessarily turn to reinforced maths as before, but to reinforced SVT. But that doesn’t settle the question for all the others, those who don’t choose maths as their specialty and who only have two hours a week of scientific teaching in the final year. This is where the problem is.
A possible evolution of the teaching of maths
To evolve means that in these two weekly hours, you must not sacrifice maths to physics-chemistry or SVT. Because Jean-Michel Blanquer is not the only one responsible for this situation. If there is almost no more math for students who do not have this famous math bump, it is also because math teachers have abandoned this teaching, whenever SVT teachers could provide it. .
And if there are fewer girls, it is also because, in the opinion of most observers, they would not be sure of themselves, and before even trying, would give up facing what appears as an arduous specialty. This is a very difficult trend to measure precisely, but it says one thing: as is often the case in mathematics, we are faced with an equation with several unknowns. Is this a step back on the part of the Minister of National Education? It is in any case a rectification of borders.
A way to defuse?
Yes, because we are in the pre-election period and any subject can turn sour. Yes, because the warning messages have gone far beyond the small circle of pedagogical specialists: we were beginning to see in this decline in math an illustration of further decline in France. Valérie Pécresse seized on the subject, employers too, pointing out that France needs engineers and that neglecting maths would be an insult to the future. It must be said that it is difficult to have at the same time a President of the Republic who praises industrial France and its engineers, and a school system which downgrades, even involuntarily, maths.
And finally, yes, he was right to rectify the borders because, already destabilized by the battles over the health protocol in schools and the controversy over his holidays in Spain, Jean-Michel Blanquer must absolutely put an end to this spiral which risks, in the balance sheet of the five-year term, to move its action on the school from the column of pluses to the column of minuses. Another math story.