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Dear Champiteans,
À quoi ça sert d’apprendre une poésie ?
To this question asked by an 8th grader who had to memorize Charles Baudelaire's L'Albatros, I hesitated to answer: - Ça ne sert à rien, before putting forward more reasonable arguments.
This question, which must have crossed my mind at that age, is asked today with an entirely different acuity, since the school is no longer the unique repository of knowledge. The temptation to withdraw into utilitarianism is undeniably a feature of our thinking on the curricula and the learning objectives. Although the concern to prepare our students to face the challenges of a constantly changing world is so essential, it cannot by itself satisfy our educational project. Our ambition is also to lead our students to spread their “ailes de géants” and rise above purely material contingencies; poetry, like music or the visual arts, are the surest guides.
The "Silence, on lit !" initiative, which aims to promote reading during this school year, may not have been totally unmotivated at the outset. However, it allows for this breathing space, this disconnection from a well-adjusted timetable, like a thumb in the face of what we thought was most useful. What could be more tempting than abandoning a mathematical theorem or a list of irregular verbs to descendre des Fleuves impassibles !
In an era where algorithms and artificial intelligence have triumphed, ridding us of the useless, let us offer our students these moments of escape, of silence or of boredom, where they can, like Arthur Rimbaud's “Petit-Poucet rêveur”, lift their souls towards the beautiful and the true, develop their critical thinking and thus forge their freedom.
Thierry Germanier
Director of the Primary School