I know the republican school; I studied in it. It was an institution with strict demands, a bleak, unpleasant place that built high walls to keep out the noise from outside. Thirty years of foolish reforms have altered our landscape. The republican school has been replaced by an ‘educational community’ that is horizontal rather than vertical. The curricula have been made easier, the noise from outside has come in, society has come inside the school. |
This is a quote from an early interview by French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut commenting on multiculturalism and the riots in France.
Since education is intrinsically part of culture, Finkielkraut's words have even more resonance.
Multiculturalism has obviously failed French culture and education, as it has whatever there is here of Canadian culture.
Picking and choosing what is ‘nice’ horizontally along the multiple cultures has only brought about a smorgasbord of unrelated and watered down cultures. Excellence and mediocrity paraded together, and of course mediocrity won.
Picking and choosing what is ‘nice’ horizontally in schools has introduced an ‘educated’ population which has no patience, discipline or desire to know what is really behind the information, what built it, where its roots are.
There is something religious about the bleak high walls of Finkielkraut’s vertical system. Monasteries (cross-culturally) have always been centers of learning. Jealously guarded by high walls, even if metaphorical, they were able to sustain the peace and quiet necessary for serious scholarship. Universities, not surprisingly, were founded on religious grounds, not academic. Where Truth is venerated and celebrated.
It is this lack of reverence for knowledge and truth that has brought on the ‘horizontal’ system which Finkielkraut talks about.
If truth is no longer a prerequisite for knowledge, then what is?
Finkielkraut was forced to retract his statements in a humiliating interview after he received death threats and law suites from ‘ethnic’ organizations.