Réseaux de changement

Extrait du Rapport Faure (UNESCO, 1972). Il s’agit de la page 256 de la version française (que j’ai sous les yeux) ou 226de la version anglaise (en pdf ici)

« […] Telle est la problématique qu’il faut savoir définir si l’on ne veut être ni trop optimiste en imaginant qu’une modification globale suffit à entraîner des changement globaux, ni trop pessimiste en considérant que toute modification reste marginale par rapport à la force d’inertie du système. »

—/ début d’un copier-coller de la version anglaise /—

« Even in countries where the education system has been largely decentralised, educational reform can no longer be effected through scattered initiatives. There are many reasons for this: governments have become very conscious of their responsibilities in this area, educational problems are a major concern of central administrations and exert a decisive influence on the future of youth, and public opinion is alert to these questions. The central education authority must take part in this, in ways adapted to each particular country, provided of course that it approves of reforms and does not regard innovation as a factor disturbing established systems and its own routine. The effects of a change initiated by a central administration may spread outwards, like a succession of waves, from one department to another. One slight modification may be responsible for influencing all the networks in an educational system. An attempt to bring about such a modification may set up resistance among administrators, teachers and even among parents, and, if all these reactions combine, may paralyse the system even more. But it may also spark a movement of approval, precipitate latent processes of change, so that when taken together, and complementing each other, the phenomena unleashed in this way may reach the critical threshold required to bring about some fundamental modification and even a transformation throughout the system. Innovation does not automatically trigger a positive chain reaction, any more than an over-all change is achieved by mechanically adding a number of partial changes together. Whence the idea of a network for change, by which we understand the (fortuitous or intended) combination of modifications which are in harmony with each other and which are capable of multiplying their effects or producing them through a kind of echo effect, and thereby engendering some substantial change. This is the type of problem situation which we must be able to define if we are to avoid being over-optimistic, by imagining that some over-all modification can produce over-all changes, or over-pessimistic, by believing that any modification has only a marginal significance in relation to the power of inertia within the system. »

—/ fin /—