what classrooms should look like in 20 years...

What classrooms should look like in 20 years.

The current president of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, believes that the current French education system is a failure, though it is well known for its rigor and high academic standards. The failings of high school education in France, according to Sarkozy, are that schools rely too much on rote memorization, too much “theory and abstraction,” and that too little value and respect is given to teachers and the teaching profession. Sarkozy has also charged that French universities are a failure because there is little financial motivation for students to succeed with virtually free tuition, and as a corollary result, sufficient academic facilities are either absent or lacking in quality. The French president further claims that French academia does not correspond to the needs of the French economy.

Sarkozy has much to say about the current failings of French education, and much of this may be zealous newbie political banter, but his proposals for education reform in France are at best vague and he doesn’t appear to have any particular objectives in his mind for these reforms. President Sarkozy proposes that students be exposed to more of a “civic education,” with studies of comparative religion and art, trips to businesses, walks through parks, and sports. He would like higher tuition to be charged at universities, both to discourage deadbeat students and to provide more funding for improving the quality of facilities (and presumably the faculty??).

It seems that Sarkozy would like the French education to model American-style education. And in my view American-style education (even progressive, cutting edge American education) is intended not so much to prepare students to be civically-minded and culturally aware as to feed office workers into academia and tech jobs and the service industry.

Is that really what we need?

On the other hand, what kind of army is all generals and no soldiers?

(http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9769433)