A code, then another, then a manual and so on. Half of my library was emptied to end up on the floor.
“How do you manage to hold up during the debates in the National Assembly? This question comes up regularly. It will be admitted that the debates in public session on the pension reform were particularly indigestible. Half of the Discord room in Arcadia was discovering the potential mediocrity of the deputies. Answer: While they are “debating”, I do housework. I try to avoid the vacuum cleaner, so as not to start a neighbor war. But, everything else can happen. A chance that the debates were not prolonged, because I was on the verge of disembarking at my neighbor’s to clean her windows. She’s good-natured, but I have the idea that to offer her, on the night of Friday to Saturday, after midnight, to give her the checks would not have been welcome.
The ruinous obsolescence of textbooks
My biggest problem being that when I start, I have trouble stopping. Taking advantage of a well-deserved parliamentary vacation, I alternated between taking care of my person and cleaning the apartment. My gaze fell on my library. That’s when the tragedy happened.
A code, then another, then a manual and so on. Half of my library was emptied to end up on the floor. The absurdity of the situation jumped out at me—and so did the dust. Each code, each manual, each exercise book cost at least forty euros. At my feet literally lies a gross minimum wage, if not a French median salary. Why is this situation absurd?
I did my graduate studies in the early 2000s. Laptops weren’t the current norm yet, but we all had a PC with an Internet connection at home — I’m talking about my fellow students. However, we were all obliged to have at least one civil code at home, to have the case law under each article. Over the years, we have accumulated codes, manuals, exercise books, all with an expiration date. Not to mention the fact that we all had to show up for the exam with the code corresponding to the subject.
Ostentatious waste on the backs of students
You know what’s even more infuriating about all of this? We were not graded on the accuracy of our answer, but on the reasoning. Which is to say that we could do without all that for at least half of our course.
I can already hear my editor “Okay, but what does it have to do with IT? “. Here it is: if we had been properly equipped with computers, all this waste, of money and paper, we could have done without it. It would have sufficed that we pass our written exams in computer rooms, with only access to Légifrance, which would have had the additional virtue of teaching us how to use the tool. What’s the point of making us compose by hand, when all the people who have finished their law studies produce by computer?
The most bizarre thing about this story is that, unlike other subjects, the law changes every year — thank you to the legislator — so that if we can keep certain manuals or codes for a few years, ten years later they have become completely obsolete. Some of my first-year textbooks talk about the general counsel. Apart from throwing them in the trash, nothing can be done with them. Correction: I’ve had a few suggestions for recycling my law textbooks on Twitter, but since I don’t want to get anyone, including myself, into trouble, I’ll be careful not to share them.
Reign of immobility
We could really modernize higher education and finally, make them more accessible, including financially, if we got out of certain old patterns, which consists of having a whole class of students compose in writing, with codes. We can think that scrolling through computer rooms, correctly configured, risks leading to saturation of the premises and timetables. In this case, why maintain the orals, which have exactly the same disadvantages?
In the general press, we frequently find the debate on a leveling down of learning, but do we ask ourselves the question of the method? During my law studies, I spent at least four times public finances. I have always brilliantly collected a 2/20. If, in my first year, a tutor or a lecturer had told me “it’s October, you’re sitting in front of the public sessions of the National Assembly during the finance bill for the year to come”, I would have understood the matter — and I would have validated it.
This pile of books symbolizes everything that was missing during my schooling: common sense, practice, ingenuity. We were supposed to be trained in the practice of law, but we were never trained in the practice of law in a professional setting, nor in the tools.
Socially accepted pollution
Let’s put aside the fact that I’m about to throw the gross minimum wage in the trash: what about ecology? We are regularly annoyed by saying that digital is a big polluter and that we should not watch Netflix. Except that all these books, which I was obliged to acquire, are just as much producers of pollution. We cut trees, we used ink, we routed them.
While an e-reader or tablet would have done just as well. Obviously, not in my time, but seeing students running after codes during exams, you realize that things haven’t changed. That some teachers continue to impose the purchase of their books for the validation of exams. That learning methods have not evolved. And that finally, many students will find themselves lost on leaving the faculty, simply because they will not have been prepared for the professional practice of the subject for which they have suffered for at least five years.
In retrospect, it’s easy to say, but the general impression that all of this leaves me is that we are very satisfied with the situation. With a little good will, maybe things will improve in a few years. With these good words, I will continue my spring cleaning, now that the discussion on pension reform continues in the Senate.