In his exhaustive study, “The Encyclopedic Philosophy of Michel Serres”, Keith Moser, Associate Professor at the University of Mississippi (USA), devotes a whole chapter to the philosopher’s analysis of the global educational crisis an the new role of the teacher in the digital age.

Although billions of Homo sapiens now experience a radically different way of knowing, linked to virtual technology, Michel Serres, writes Keith Moser, reveals that many educators are still trying to teach in exactly the same fashion as before these weeping epistemological changes took place. For the philosopher, the problem stems from the fact that teachers at all levels of instruction have yet to acknowledge that modern students are a very different human animal and to adapt their pedagogical strategies accordingly. Keith Moser recalls that in Petite Poucette (2012), Michel Serres describes educational institutions as “les lieux où s’épuise la vieille pédagogie” in the age of the “nouvelle démocratie du savoir” : “Nous vivons aujourd’hui, sur les questions d’éducation, une transformation gigantesque et cette transformation s’opère au niveau mondial. La personne qui éduque et la personne éduquée ne sont plus les mêmes. Avec les technologies, l’être humain a changé de façon radicale. La naissance, la mort ne sont plus la même qu’il y a 40 ans, le rapport au monde et au savoir a changé.” For Michel Serres, the realization that the young minds that teachers are attempting to mould are not the same as those of countless generations of human beings before is the first step to solving the global educational crisis.

Whereas traditional conceptions of education were centered around the teacher as the absolute purveyor of knowledge, a phenomenon often referred to as the “Atlas Complex”, Michel Serres, posits Keith Moser, views the educator as a facilitator that helps students to discover their own “independent paths”. He has always advocated that “educators in all areas need to pursue invention instead of imitation” even before the Internet explosion, which he anticipated a few years before in texts such as Le Tiers-Instruit (1991) and Atlas (1994). Emphatically declaring that the job of an educator is not to indoctrinate students by asking them to regurgitate large chunks of information presented in class verbatim or to rehash someone else’s perspectives without reflection, Michel Serres states that “le but de l’instruction est la fin de l’instruction, c’est-à-dire l’invention.”

“Educators in all areas need to pursue invention instead of imitation.”

In Le Tiers-Instruit and all throughout his oeuvre, Michel Serres, according to Keith Moser, emphasizes the importance of independent thought and creativity. The philosopher equates thought with invention, or the ability to make original connections on one’s own, and explains that the ideal role of a teacher is that of a temporary guide who vanishes or takes a step back when students are able to dictate their own learning. For Michel Serres, the measuring stick for success is when students no longer need their instructors to find potential solutions to a given problem.

Keith Moser underscores Michel Serres’s affirmation that virtual technology has made it even more feasible for educators at all levels of instruction to espouse and implement a teaching philosophy that is more flexible and less dogmatic than previous paradigms. Serres has always judged rigid educational paradigms with fixed outcomes “or prescribed curriculum content” quite harshly throughout his career. In Le Tiers-Instruit, he describes the process of knowledge as an unpredictable journey that cannot be entirely scripted in advance by the teacher. After the student has acquired all of the basic information that he or she needs to explore and discover on his or her own,Serres explains that “ce voyage de la pédagogie” often bifurcates in directions that the teacher could not have planned in advance: “Aucun apprentissage n’évite le voyage. Sous la conduite d’un guide, l’éducation pousse à l’extérieur. Pars : sors… Tes idées initiales ne répètent que des mots anciens. Jeune : vieux perroquet. Le voyage des enfants, voilà le sens nu du mot grec pédagogie. Apprendre lance l’errance.”

In Rameaux (2004), Michel Serres, says Keith Moser, clarifies that he is not suggesting that teachers abandon all structure entirely as part of their philosophy of education that undergirds their classroom practices. The philosopher affirms that it is vital to have some kind of systematic yet flexible methodology that acts as a catalyst for student learning: “Conformez-vous
au carcan du formatage… Obéissez au père-format qui règne, invisible et absent, sur le savoir absolu. Mais si vous désirez inventer, prenez des risques, laissez le format…Les grandes oeuvres réunissent format et invention, discipline de fer et liberté : père et fils.”