Why I don't dream of Harvard
In the limitless admiration that people give this diploma-machine, I see a disturbing lack of perspective. True, Harvard, the richest university in the world, and a private one, has collected a lot of laurels. But don't forget that laurels like to grow on dungheaps.
Observation 1. Our French universities are as poor as church mice, and teachers who spend time across the Atlantic come home perturbed by what they have seen: good research funding, well-equipped classrooms and laboratories, high-tech lecture halls and libraries, and salaries to make a French professor nearing retirement turn green with envy. The U.S. is a young country that invests in its young people and in knowledge! It is producing brains, the prerequisite for its technological advances, which themselves are one of the sources of its superpower. The American dream! Anyone would fall under its spell!
In Isabelle Rey-Lefebvre's article in Le Monde, 16 May 2012 ("The Secrets of Harvard, First Among Universities"), we learn that "44 Nobel prize-winners, 46 Pulitzer prize-winners, and eight presidents of the United States have come from Harvard." Damn! With information drawn from "La face cachée de Harvard" ["The Hidden Face of Harvard"], by sociologist Stéphanie Grousset-Charrière, the article illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of the kind of teaching dispensed by Harvard. We have talked about the advantages. The disadvantages are the logical counterpart. The teachers never stay home, even when they are ill; they have personal relationships with the students; they don't criticize the students when they evaluate them, but make positive remarks in order to be "constructive."
Seen from another planet, this way of teaching seems interesting and original, especially as it is true that consideration for the students is better than scorn and humiliation. But Harvard did not invent this motivating method, which flourished in Europe from the time of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. What is disquieting about this relationship between professors and students is not that it is influenced by constructive criticism, listening, and attention; but that it is the result of clientelism. Students pay a lot of money to go to Harvard, and expect their professors not only to be knowledgeable, competent and active, but also submissive, since the client is king.
This clientelism explains how it is possible that students are allowed to evaluate their teachers, and that someone who has not been "able to convince them" can be fired in unilateral fashion, like a valet in a French comedy! The payer bosses the payee, in the country of the doer who defeats the thinker! Seneca, who had a problem with Nero, whose tutor he was, complained in his book On Benefits [De beneficiis] that human relationships in Rome were based on indebtedness. He wanted to substitute for that commercial relationship to his client one of the gods toward humans, which he defined as one of kindness.
From this I infer that making children start out in life with debts is damaging, if not crippling! It is not so important that bad teachers are fired; but it is much worse that the relation between master and pupil is commercial, not intellectual. At Harvard, teaching is subject to economics, the intellectual is subject to the clientèle.
Remark 2. Debt means debtors. American students are looking for income more than knowledge, preferably income that will allow them to pay back their debts! It is already not easy to make children want to learn. Is it really necessary to make them go into debt in order to hyper-motivate their lack of appetite for scholarship [sic]? The liberals (in the economic sense) will say that those who go into debt find it a motivating factor. The psychoanalyst would say the same thing to his patient: pay so that you can know yourself better. Do you see the masochism in this approach?
It is true that Max Weber described this kind of logic well in his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; John Harvard was a young Puritan pastor at the beginning of the 1600s. One can nevertheless wonder if knowledge needs to be purified by debt to expand and be fruitful.
Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook, did not find his idea through economic masochism, but through a more joyful impulse. Marie Curie, Louis Néel, Albert Schweitzer, Bergson, Camus, Sartre, none of them went into debt to produce their work. At a time when we know that French teachers are paid worse than their colleagues in Germany or the U.K., should we announce that they do not deserve a pay raise unless they "Harvardize" their teaching methods, in order to re-price knowledge-- in other words, abandon free, disinterested teaching in favor of an enticing babying of the student, based on clientelism? The idea is already percolating in certain people's heads and in certain behavior.
But at a time when Quebec students are revolting against a major rise in university tuition, at a time when American student debt "has just crossed the threshold of one trillion dollars and is the main reason for American indebtedness," it is perhaps also a time not to "Harvardize" minds even more, and to invent other less costly, less castrating [sic! for this guy, professors are male, ça se voit] solutions. Let us start from the following thesis: knowledge is not physical; it is abundant, communicable, and not necessarily of a commercial nature. Let us remember that in Greek, the word "School" ("skholè") means neither client nor debt, but "leisure."
--Emmanuel Jaffelin, agrégé de philosophie, teacher at the Lycée Lakanal [in Versailles]. Author of Petit éloge de la gentillesse (François Bourin Editions)
Pourquoi Harvard ne fait pas rêver?
Je vois dans l'admiration sans borne que vouent certains à cette machine à diplômes une absence de recul inquiétante. Certes, les lauriers ne manquent pas à cette université privée qui est aussi la plus riche au monde, mais il faut rappelerque le laurier aime à pousser sur le fumier.
Acte I : Nos universités françaises sont pauvres comme Job sur son tas de fumier et tout enseignant qui fait un séjour outre-Atlantique revient dépité de ce qu'il a vu : des moyens de recherche, des salles et des laboratoires équipés, des amphithéâtres et des bibliothèques high tech, des salaires à faire rêver un professeur de l'université française à deux doigts de la retraite. L'Amérique est un pays jeune qui investit dans ses jeunes et dans le savoir ! Elle produit de la matière grise qui est la condition de son avance technologique qui s'avère elle-même une des sources de son hyperpuissance. The american dream ! Comment ne pas être séduit !
Dans l'article d'Isabelle Rey-Lefebvre (Les secrets d'Harvard, la première des universités, Le Monde du 16 mai 2012), on apprend que "44 Prix Nobels, 46 Prix Pulitzer et 8 présidents des Etats-Unis sont sortis de ses rangs". Damned ! S'appuyant sur La face cachée de Harvard de la sociologue Stéphanie Grousset-Charrière, l'article met en évidence les avantages et les inconvénients de l'enseignement si caractéristique de cette université. Nous avons évoqué les avantages dont les inconvénients sont la logique contrepartie : l'enseignant ne s'absente jamais même lorsqu'il est malade ; il personnalise sa relation à l'étudiant et ne le sanctionne pas lorsqu'il l'évalue, mais positive ses travaux afin d'être"constructif".
Cette démarche, vue de Sirius, paraît intéressante et novatrice tant il est vrai que la considération de l'élève vaut mieux que le mépris ou l'humiliation. Mais Harvard n'a pas inventé cette pédagogie de la motivation qui a fleuri en Europe dans le sillage de l'Emile de Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Ce qu'il y a d'inquiétant dans cette relation du professeur et de l'étudiant, ce n'est pas qu'elle soit empreinte de construction, d'écoute et d'attention : c'est qu'elle résulte du clientélisme. En payant très cher son inscription à Harvard, l'étudiant n'attend pas seulement de son professeur qu'il soit savant, compétent et performant : il attend qu'il soit soumis, puisque le client est roi.
Ce clientélisme explique que les étudiants évaluent leurs enseignants et que celui qui n'a pas "su les convaincre" se voit congédié de manière unilatérale, comme un valet dans les pièces de Marivaux ! Le payeur sort le payé au pays du doer qui l'emporte sur le thinker ! Sénèque déjà, qui avait fort à faire avec Néron, dont il fut le précepteur, se plaignait, dans son ouvrage Des bienfaits, du fait que la relation humaine à Rome reposât sur la dette : il souhaitait substituer à cette relation du commerçant à son client celle des dieux aux hommes, par laquelle il définissait la bienfaisance.
J'en déduis que faire démarrer des enfants dans la vie par une dette constitue un méfait, pour ne pas dire un forfait ! Il n'est pas grave que de mauvais enseignants soient révoqués ; il l'est davantage que la relation entre maître et élève soit commerciale et non intellectuelle. A Harvard, le pédagogique est soumis à l'économique, l'intellectuel à la clientèle.
Acte II : Qui dit dette, dit débiteur. L'étudiant américain est ainsi moins en quête desavoir que de revenus, ne serait-ce que de ceux qui lui permettront de remboursersa dette ! Il n'est déjà pas facile de motiver un enfant à apprendre, alors faut-il l'endetter pour transformer son peu d'appétence scolaire en hypermotivation universitaire ? Les libéraux (au sens économique) diront que celui qui s'endette trouve dans celle-ci sa motivation. Le psychanalyste dit la même chose à son patient : paye pour te connaître toi-même. On voit quel masochisme est à l'œuvre dans une telle démarche !
Certes, si Max Weber a bien décrit cette logique dans L'éthique protestante et l'esprit du capitalisme - John Harvard était un jeune pasteur puritain du début du XVIIe siècle -, on peut néanmoins se demander si le savoir doit passer par la dette pour s'épanouir et fructifier.
L'inventeur de Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, n'a pas trouvé son idée dans ce masochisme économique, mais dans une autre pulsion, plus joyeuse ! Ni Marie Curie ni Louis Neels, ni Albert Schweizer ni Bergson ni Camus ni Sartre ne se sont endettés pour enfanter leurs œuvres. Alors que nous savons aujourd'hui que les enseignants français sont moins bien payés que leurs homologues allemands ou anglais, faut-il, pour revaloriser le savoir, décréter qu'ils ne mériteront une augmentation de salaire qu'au prix d'une "havardisation" de leur pédagogie, c'est-à-dire d'un abandon de la relation pédagogique gratuite et désintéressée au profit d'une infantilisation séductrice de l'enseignant sur fond de clientélisme ? L'idée est déjà dans les têtes et dans certains comportements.
Mais à l'heure où les étudiants québécois se révoltent contre une augmentation élevée du droit d'inscription à l'université, à l'heure où la dette étudiante américaine"vient de franchir le seuil de 1 000 milliards de dollars et constitue la première cause d'endettement des Américains", il est peut-être temps de ne pas "havardiser" davantage les esprits et d'inventer des solutions moins coûteuses et moins castratrices ? Partons du postulat suivant : le savoir est immatériel, abondant, communicable et non nécessairement marchand. Rappelons-nous qu'en grec, école (Skholè") ne veut dire ni client ni dette, mais "loisir" !
--Emmanuel Jaffelin, agrégé de philosophie, enseignant au lycée Lakanal. Auteur d'un "Petit éloge de la gentillesse" (François Bourin Editions)
Commentary by Me, Sedulia:
Having been a student at both an Ivy League university and a French Grande École, I think I have as good a right as anyone to criticize the thinking in this article.
The main problem with the article is that much of its argument is based on something that is simply not true. It is not expensive to go to Harvard, except for rich people who can afford it. Most of the student body receives outright grants to go. This includes non-American students from all over the world.
Why do Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford have such good financial aid? Because their students loved their experience and contribute huge amounts of money so that future students can go there without burdensome debt. I know, because I am one of those who writes yearly checks to my Alma Mater.
Was I rich, an "elite" student? No! My ancestors were coal miners, carpenters, and farmers. My family was poor. I was elite only in the sense that I thirsted for knowledge, like most Ivy League students to this day. And you will find that, very far from being "elite" in the sense of money, Harvard students come from every financial background, but mostly middle-class. To be fair, American public schools are so bad that the poorest students are ill-served, and few of them arrive at top schools without substantial academic help.
It is a vile aspersion to assert that Ivy League students are so avid for gain that the only reason they want to go to Harvard is to make money. What evidence does the writer have for this or any of his other assertions about Harvard students? It is an assumption on a level with the oh-so-clever remark I read once by a French writer talking about a slum in Brooklyn with such paper-thin walls that you could "hear the neighbor's bidet." Quel connaisseur!
I was also surprised to learn, from this expert on Ivy League student debt who is unaware of Harvard's financial aid, that students in the Ivy League are "clients" who force their teachers to be "submissive" and that their relationship is a commercial one of customer to clerk. Hmm. I wonder if he has ever met a Harvard professor? "Submissive" is not the first adjective that springs to mind.
It was also surprising to learn from him that Harvard professors cannot stay home when they are sick. Really? I guess that's the flip side-- in France they stay home saying they're sick even when they're not.
The grudging acknowledgement that students might actually thrive in an atmosphere of encouragement such as that at Harvard is immediately followed by the statement that (of course!) this idea was invented in France. Socrates had nothing to do with it, then.
The praise for the French teaching system in the article is especially ludicrous. Imagine defending a system because it creates no personal relationship with the students! In France, teachers know they cannot be fired, and that their students' whole future lives depend on them (to a much greater extent than in the U.S., France is prey to credentialism). In my own and my children's experience, and that of French and foreign people I know here, teachers in France are, compared to American teachers, arrogant, out of touch, incompetent in and ignorant of the modern world, boring or careless lecturers, unremittingly nasty and unavailable to their students, and all too often literally absent. Because why not? You get what you pay for!
The teachers in American universities are not hired and fired by their student ratings, which are much more affected by publication record and academic reputation. But the ratings do influence hiring and firing decisions. AS THEY SHOULD. In France, the government itself stepped in to ban a website that allowed students to rate their teachers. Freedom of speech, quoi. Even though teachers here cannot be fired except for the grossest misconduct, they were too afraid to hear their students' honest opinions.
I resent this article's boring and stupid idées-reçues assumption that Americans, unlike those noble self-sacrificing French people, have a commercial culture that cares only about money. Oh yeah? Who volunteers more? Who gives more to charity? Who is more hospitable to foreigners? Has this person ever even been to America? And by that I do not mean New York City and Disneyland. Does he know one single person who went to Harvard? From the article, the answer looks obvious.
It's enlightening to notice that throughout the article he calls the university students "children."
Never heard of Louis Néel, who I just read is a physicist born in 1904, but I would think that someone trying to defend the French educational system would not use as sole examples of its prodigies people who are all noticeably dead.
On the reverse side, I agree with the writer about many things. Although Harvard does not leave its students deep in debt, many American colleges do-- and often, the worse the reputation of the college, the worse the debt. This is a national scandal.
It's wonderful that public schooling leaves the average French Bac candidate with a far higher fund of basic information about math, science, history, geography and general culture than most American college graduates. And it's wonderful that parents don't have to remortgage their house for their children's college education. (Not to mention the French health care system, which whatever its problems is head and shoulders better than the American 50-million-uninsured non-system. I love France.)
It is pretty amazing, really, that you can get any education at all for €300 a year or less, which is what French university tuition costs. I guess it's too much to ask for the teachers to be nice on top of it. Much less decent toilets. Since we're speaking of laurels growing on dungheaps.
Grande École, unisex toilets.