L'Ecole Mutuelle

L' Ecole Mutuelle: Une pédagogie trop efficace?” by Anne Querrien

On the 20th of November 2004 I attended a lecture by Isabel Stengers at
ULB (Free University of Brussels) concerning education within the context
of a symposium around Ivan Illich which was called "Quel monde
voulons-nous pour demain?" (Which world do we want for tomorrow?).

In this lecture she drew the attention to a study by Anne Querrien about
mutual schools. This study appeared in 1967 as number 23 of the magazine
"Recherche". This number was called "L'Ensaignement", and "enseignement"
was written with an a instead of an e. Recherche was the magazine of the
research group CERFI, Centre d'etudes, de recherche et de formation
institutionelles (Center for the Study and Research of Institutional
Formation), founded by Felix Guattari and his friends in 1965. CERFI
itself was a very exceptional research group, in the sense that also those
without the "required titles" were given an opportunity to do research
inside this group. The group existed until 1980 and was then canceled by
the state. 

"L'Ensaignement", was republished in 2005 under the form of a book called
"L'école mutuelle: une pédagogie trop efficace?" with a new introduction
by Isabel Stengers and Anne Querrien. 

"L' écolle mutelle" is a kind of school with very minimal resources, that
was founded by the France state in the beginning of the 19th century to
keep the “poor” from the street. The set-up was that there were groups of
60 to 80 students of all ages. Every student learned from the other
students. "L'Ensaignement" tells the history of a type of a school that
worked in an rather unexpected way. The school surpassed the goals of the
state. And it was closed exactly for the reasons of its double success.
There were 2 things that were reproached. The students learned in 2 years
what they supposed to learn in 6 years. And they didn't have learned to
show respect due to knowledge, in the sense that the students didn't
submit themselves.

In her lecture Isabel Stengers looked upon mutual schools not as a
solution for all but as an important proposal that has been refused or a
possible track that has been blocked. And she finds it an alternative to
the failure of the kind of school that Ivan Illich describes in his known
book Deschooling Society from 1971. 

In Deschooling Society Ivan Illich drafts the failure of the school. More
precise in the sense that the attempt of the school is to fabricate more
equality and that schools are actually fabricating more inequality. Ivan
Illich is referring in his book to a right to learn (in French
“apprendre”) in 2 senses. The right to learn something and also at the
same time the right to learn something to someone else. Learning functions
always in 2 directions. Only the one who has passed knowledge to someone
else knows that he knows something. And it is learning in this second
sense that is not allowed inside most schools. What Illich addresses in
his book is this monopoly of teachers inside the school. And this is only
re-enforced today that constructing a practice without passing through a
school is forbidden. Jobs are related with diplomas. And also the teachers
themselves are a victim of the mechanisms of a monopolistic definition of
schools. They also have to have a diploma in order to teach.

Anne Querrien talks less about a right of learning and more about an
agency of learning. An agency that produces a desire in the sense of a
what she calls in French a “sympathie imitative”. This addresses not a
desire to learn as such. It is difference that creates a mutual cohesion
in a group. Learning in itself is mutual. The difference between those who
understood something and those who didn't creates a possibility to meet.
There is no school which could possibly have the means to respect each
child to such an extent that every child is in the center. Mutual schools
give children the responsibility to learn to other children. In this way
it gives the chance to everyone to learn in 2 senses, to learn something
and to learn something to someone. The unexpected success of the school is
a collective force that becomes by the differences among the group. A
group is activated thanks to its heterogeneity. Such a mutuality opposes
itself to an evaluation of every individual in terms of their submission
to the conformity of common criteria. That certain students don't
understand something is a collective problem that is part of learning. The
mutual school made transmitted a confidence in one self and in the others,
the capacity to pose questions, to say that one hasn't understood. It is a
in-submission to those who pretend to think for the others, without the
others, for the good of others. The joy to learn to others is part of the
experience of learning. One has only learned that which one is capable to
learn to others. 

Unfortunately there exists no English translation of the book "Ecole
Mutuelle". 

Summary by:

AGENCE/AGENCIA/AGENCY/AGENTSCHAP/AGENTUR
Parvis-Voorplein
P.B. 55
B-1060 Brussels


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