Months after ‘les Assises de l’éducation – à visage humain’ – etching a dispassionate perspective to the national debate on education is probably most befitting now.

Les assises were undoubtedly summoned with godly intentions, but objectively speaking, it may still have set its left foot forward because the qualifier ‘à visage humain’ was a prefab, stealing a march on the very intelligence it aimed at surfacing from the grassroots. Indeed, ‘à visage humain’ as header apparently misfits the multiplicity and kind of issues reportedly raised. There is a distinction to draw between examples of ministerial actions with ‘à visage humain’ via state endorsement of examination fees for resits, calling off suspension of teaching staff for allegations of subversive incitation, lowering eligibility for HSC to 3 credits and underwriting PSEA grants-inaid as a political decision, averring students as its ultimate beneficiaries. School and curriculum are, however, a different kettle of fish.

Curriculum is to education what blood is to human body. ‘éducation – à visage humain’, as a matter of fact, derives from one among many of the curriculum dialectical orientations that places the budding youngster at the centre of the school’s preoccupations by acknowledging that she is ‘child’ first, then ‘learner’, and challenges the educator to get learning grown practising the equilibristic skills deemed as part of one’s professional baggage. The true and absolute expression of this approach is visibly manifest and generously successful at early childhood stages because, amongst other contextual factors, time ticks by the respondent’s pace and the curriculum is but a pathway strategized to elicit the multidimensional or holistic potentials of the new-to-life subject. But it is as sensible to posit that intermediate childhood then requires the same recipient of the school’s service to subtly come to grips that she is now poised to be ‘learner’ first and ‘child’ less. In 2015, the US passed the ‘Every Student Succeeds Act’ (ESSA) to repeal the ‘No Child Left Behind’ (NCLB) Act of 2001. Although ESSA retains much of the underlying philosophy of the NCLB programme, replacing ‘child’ by ‘student’ is informed and speaks for itself.

There is more by way of inconvenient truth underlying the lace of lyricism to the ‘à visage humain’ branding. Brandishing ‘à visage humain’ is an axiomatic affirmation of the canon of humanity itself as a foundational core of education; because politically leftist, it is often superfluously though, asserted to echo an intended thunderous legitimacy to counter the mechanistic ideology, which places highest premium on examinations and academic credentials. But still veering to make educational reform preponderantly hinge on humanism is like making a 180 and is portent of massive liabilities. There is cause to believe that the Extended Programme (EP) has been a quod erat demonstrandum (QED) of a similar folly.

EP: a ‘prima facie’ precedent

The EP does indeed call for a time to stand and stare at a case on hand to develop forensic insights as to how and where to unnamed versions of ‘à visage humain’ paper-boats may drift. EP has substance to hypothesise that it was destined to flop from the very conceptual stage because the underpinning was a pathetic fallacy, artificially hinged on the concepts of equity and inclusiveness, albeit inspired by a compelling goal for social justice in education even if it steps beyond the line. It illogically presupposed that a learner, who fails to meet the minimum pass mark after six years of continuous study on an institutionalised automatic promotion basis, could take the same examinations as a flyer four years after, rather than the three years for those successful at PSAC level, provided the learner were to be allocated a supplementary one year to iron out the academic lag of unspecified miscellaneous nature! Standing to be proven wrong, it had neither any specific – nor specified – grounding in pedagogical theory. It paid lip service to research, ‘Research shows that ALL children have talents and potential’ (MoEHRTESR: 2017). Well, social literacy is ripe enough in this country to assume that commoners drink it like plain water just like apples fall to the ground, ‘all children have talents and potential’ (sic). Research used in the rationale is not more than an ostentatious generic, a flimflam, apparently to sell what’s dressed up as the noblest of intentions, except that it unrealistically and even disrespectfully loaded EP teachers with a humanly impossible mission, which those with no teaching experience may not even conceive.

The EP was a concocted artificiality. Just be the devil’s advocate or because education is of cardinal importance to the nation, remove partisan political blinkers and do reverse thinking: It is simply a no-brainer that the EP was plainly psyched up by a nameless philosophy akin to ‘à visage humain’ by way of a desperate attempt to salvage the foreseeable PSAC failures. The bonus end-in-view was understandably as much to ensure that EP as an appendage to the Nine Year Continuous Basic Education (NYCBE) did not mar the latter’s success as an innovative project. The EP crash was, in hindsight, but an invited tragedy by making an ‘à visage humain’ cloned and droned project fly the extra mile. The logic was flawed, but the obsession to put all the chances on the pupil’s side, emotionally overladen, gagged everybody, except to become wiser after the event! EP stands as a QED case of error by trial. ‘À visage humain’, sentimentalist undeniably, is not any Alladin’s lamp and must not ironically be instrumentalised as a mask to make school play Superman. And this is where disruptive thinking comes in.

Disruptive thinking calls for thinking unthinkably, begging the question. School has, more often than not, sheepishly accepted to be garbed in borrowed robes. The time is ripe for the teaching personnel to constitute professional associations to crystallize informed experiential enlightenment to seed into academic policy decisions. Trade unionism shoots a different gun and to say the least, it is currently penned up in classicism, labouring to hatch its own re-invention. School is, will and must, remain dynamic but should not be made to succumb and stoop to ever-simmering crises of expectations. It deserves respect with regard to its prime mission, abiding by the rules of the game. Because curriculum is innately SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound), all cosmetic surgery is destined to rejection. IVTB has played Jenga with EP with a hand-stain of >90% of ignoble failure rate in a state-run national examination and has unbelievably gotten away with it! In US, Trump has by decree squarely closed the State Department of Education – it may be as far, but still, relevant as reference.

Concluding note

Unalterably, by inspiration and by definition, curriculum is ‘currere’ (Latin derivation) – ‘race-course’, which naturally evokes a rigorous preparedness to sustain the mileage. Indefensibly, ‘à visage humain’, on the other hand, trails behind it a psychoanalytical innuendo of exorcising the curriculum, the need to evict the devil. That many demonize the systemic inherent competition and tag examinations as unnecessarily evil is a commonplace and cannot be helped because what is equally unalterable is that curriculum is an academic construct, a conceived reality validated and accredited by a universally shared understanding and acknowledgement of its infrastructural prerequisites and nitty-gritty. It is a discipline in many a sense. Admittedly it is even political, mirroring the complex multidimensionality of its societal context. But politics can only orientate curriculum through policymaking; it cannot tamper with its internal chemistry. A country that institutionalizes automatic promotion has already crossed a red line. It is plainly a premeditated denaturation of curriculum proper. So, carry home now: What is ‘à visage humain’ implying?

About the author: Yogesh Tengur has been Associate Professor, specialising in teacher education, and Assessor of school-based teachers’ practice island-wide.