Pardon our french 💅🏽

This conversation took place in french, and you have the option to watch it on YouTube 😎 with the [insert your language] subtitles!

tl;dr

Is French school read for what’s ahead? Put it differently : is French school preparing its children for the world they will be living in tomorrow?

Last June 20, during NewKid Days’ 1st edition at Vivatech, we invited four practitioners with singular backgrounds, experiences and opinions to get a sense of where French school stands today: successes, challenges, and the road still ahead.

While this conversation was happening, children were invited to draw “The school of their dreams”, facilitated by Svenia Busson – cofounder of the think tank Education Futures, and Diana-Luz Houdayer-Laborde – graphic facilitator and author of Fragments d’impact. They then shared their wild ideas with the audience!

✨ takeaways :

“AI at school”
- … is mainly AI outside of school (90% of high school students use AI for their homework)
- AI is a major civic priority and an essential vehicle for republican unity (25% of CM2/5th grade have difficulties reading)
- there’s a choice to be made : dominate or be dominated by AI

what works well 🟢
- still the best place to meet others, especially those different than me (no longer the case with social media)
- a place of equality : access to the opportunity to learn and meet others
- up until the 80s, french school was the best in the world : compulsory from a young age in life + clear focus on the core fundamentals: reading, writing, and arithmetic
what needs to be improved 🔴
- no one teaches students how to learn, how to gain confidence, how to deal with failure or self-censorship
- students are unable to picture themselves in the future : they haven’t learnt to connect the dots between who they are, what they have learnt and what they want to do. On average, a 16 year old student knows the existence of about 35 jobs. There are 850 of them (and counting!)
- a critical lack of self-confidence (one in two children doesn’t believe in themselves) ; an interesting thing that was said, and that would later come back in our (soon to be released) interview with MacKenzie Price : the more I feel competent on a task, the more I feel confident, thus affecting the perception of my own competences
what if 🪄 (the one measure you would implement as soon as September)
- make space for more conversations : students, educators, parents ; 1h weekly to talk about the world, about AI, about ourselves. Keep taking care of one another
- clearly define school’s mission & simplify the curriculum : what should school be about? developing soft skills? professional skills? core fundamentals? The many government changes have given no visibility
- school should reconnect with parents : in the US, each parent gives 5 days/ year to assist the teacher. Start of the school year could be a good opportunity for the teacher to involve parents, share their goals, raise awareness on topics like AI, build connection with families
- introspective classes : help students know themselves better : 2h weekly “me and school” : what I’ve learnt this week, what inspires me. Helping them look to the future!

Datapoints

In a France grappling with a teacher recruitment crisis, and where per-pupil spending is 13% below the OECD average, the acceleration of innovation enabled by artificial intelligence offers hope, provided we succeed in scaling it up. (translation)

The guests

Fatma Chouaieb – Cofounder of Hello Charly, committed for 10 years to giving all young people access to the best academic and career guidance

Aude Guéneau – French literature teacher, founder of Plume & president of EdTech France, working on cognitive psychology topics at the intersection of AI and education since 2018

Pierre Amougou – ENS Ulm · Princeton, Workshops facilitator for middle and high school students on cognitive sciences applied to academic & career success, community builder Etudiants.Ambitieux

Nicolas Princen – Entrepreneur and investor in AI and education, host of the YouTube channel “La Meilleure École du Monde” (YouTube)

Moderator: Elise Nebout – Cultural entrepreneur, co-founder and director of Les Mots, 20 000 students and counting.

Timestamps & more

00:00 introducing NewKid and facilitator Elise Nebout, by Mathilde Baillet

02:44 introducing the topic and what’s at stake with a bit of history, by Elise Nebout

05:26 introducing the panelists, by Elise Nebout

06:23 AI at school, a diagnosis

10:46 the good usage of AI at school

12:00 is AI a necessity inside the classroom?

14:05 what school does well, what school struggles with

25:41 if you could change one thing, implement one measure, what would that be?

35:45 are teachers technophobes or technophiles?

41:24 going from “school for all” to “school for each one”? can a system built upon standardisation evolve or should it die? a question from the public

47:46 kids sharing the “school of their dreams”

Links

Watch the full discussion - with English subtitles! - on Youtube :

Dig deeper, friend 👇

(these are not affiliated links, just good people building good products :))

💻 Get your kid (primary school to high school) a safe writing assistant by setting up an account on Plume (free plan or 9.99€/month)

🎓 Help your teen or young adult child feel more equipped to make decisions about their life, downloading the app, it’s free : Hello Charly

📣 Invite Pierre to speak to your students, or have them follow his precious wisdom

🖋️ Treat yourself with a writing workshop with one of your favorite authors at l’école Les Mots

🎧 Learn from French education experts invited in Nicolas Princen’s Youtube channel La Meilleure Ecole du Monde

🎧… and international ones on Svenia Busson’s podcast

👁️ Smile (and relate) at Diana-Luz monthly ‘haha’ moments turned into drawings

Until next week!

Yours,

Mathilde

Is French school ready for what's ahead? What…