NOTur school system is showing worrying signs. The level of malaise of French pupils is one of the highest: 50% of our children say they are anxious at school, i.e. 30 percentage points more than the average for the countries of the‘Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2019. Is this the price of better school results? Far from there. In twenty years, French students moved from 7ᵉ to 17ᵉ place out of eighteen OECD countries in mathematics and science, in 2019. While all students are affected by this decline, even the head of the class, our country stands out with record school performance gaps and the highest correlation strong with the social origin of the students.
It is urgent to make the link between this worrying situation and the strong French deficit in social and behavioral skills. What is it about ? In several international surveys of children and adults, we observe a lack of confidence in one’s own abilities and in one’s chances of success, a low degree of perseverance, low trust in others and a low ability to cooperate. For example, young French people consider much more often than elsewhere that it is impossible to develop one’s intelligence and that success does not depend on one’s own efforts at school.
The relationship with others is also worrying since French students rank last of all OECD countries in the ability to work in groups and solve problems collectively according to the PISA surveys, far from the Nordic countries. , Germany, Great Britain or even the United States. And the same problems are found identically among adults in the world of work. Is it an immutable culture? Hopefully not. Rather, it is the result of our teaching and managerial methods.
Develop self-discipline, perseverance
We allow less than elsewhere students and employees to work with confidence in themselves and in others, we place them more often in a logic of competition rather than cooperation. Thus, according to the PISA 2018 survey, nearly two-thirds of students say they spend all of their class time taking notes and never work in a group. The good news is that these pedagogical and managerial methods can evolve and positively transform our social and behavioral skills.
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