Extrait du Rapport Faure (UNESCO, 1972). Il s’agit des pages 264 et 265 de la version française (que j’ai sous les yeux) ou 253-254 de la version anglaise (en pdf ici)
« En somme, voici quels sont les éléments essentiels des réformes et des transformations susceptibles d’êtres mises en chantier en ce début des années soixante-dix… »
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Essential elements of reform and change on which concrete work might begin in the 1970s may be summarised as follows.
The concept of education limped in time (to ‘school age’) and confined in space (to school buildings) must be superseded. School education must be regarded not as the end but as the fundamental component of total educational activity which includes both institutionalized and out-o f-school education. X proportion of educational activity should be de-formalised and replaced by flexible, diversified models. Excessive prolongation of compulsory schooling, which is beyond certain countries’ capacities, must be avoided. The extension of continual training will more than compensate for the shorter average duration of initial studies. Briefly, education must be conceived of as an existential continuum as long as life.
‘Closed’ educational systems should be made ‘open’. We must gradually eliminate rigid distinctions between primary, secondary and post-secondary education. Short-cuts and branch-articulations should be Introduced into educational channels.
Special attention should be paid to fostering education for preschool-age children by selecting and cultivating the most positive forms of family and community association in this work. All available means, conventional and unconventional, should be applied to developing basic education.
General education and technical training should be reconciled. Character and intelligence training should be harmonised. Education and work should be closely associated. Technology should be ever-present in the educational process, both as content and as guiding method. Technical education, which is unnecessarily expensive, should be supplemented and in many cases replaced by out-of-school professional training. Training should be so organized as to facilitate reconversion during employment, to lead to optimum professional mobility and to produce the greatest possible yield from the points of view both of the national economy and the trainees themselves. Narrow, premature specialization should be done away wish.
There should be more diversified higher-education institutions. Universities should be turned into multi-purpose establishments open to adults and young people, and designed as much for continual training and periodic upgrading as for specialisation and scientific research.
Education should be individualised and personalised to the utmost and constitute a preparation for self-learning. The processes of instruction and learning should be accelerated wherever this is in the learner’s and the community’s joint interest. New techniques for reproducing and communicating educational material, which are eminently suited to most envisaged innovations, should be introduced at a quicker pace, while technology in general should be re g a rded as a source of new pedagogic methods (where the cost of equipment is not excessive) and as means of making educational activity more democratic.
Educational management should be democratised, and the general public should play a large part in all decisions affecting education.
The above is assuredly not an exhaustive exploration of all details, yet may provide the broad outline for educational action appropriate to emerging needs and possibilities, and oriented towards the future.
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Jeux de mots et d’images 