Zawaya

The necessity of an epistemological break in education

By: Saloua Charfi

The baccalaureate exam does not only represent the end of a course of studies, but it is also a test of effectiveness for the educational policy in terms of curriculum, knowledge and pedagogical methods.

The baccalaureate had been able – until the middle of the previous century – to produce efficient workers and influential elites. However, it is certain that the operational capacity of the baccalaureate degree has been declining year after year, or rather from one generation to another.

The gap between what baccalaureate graduates learn and what the labor market requires is expanding continuously.

Professional competences required today consist of the integration of multiple disciplines to enable innovation and venture creation. This requires training in a variety of areas such as communication, modern technologies, languages, business culture, environment and human rights…

We know that secondary education does not qualify its graduates to easily gain these skills at university, as the obstacles are both epistemological and pedagogical.

Epistemologically speaking, quantity still dominates quality, which does not offer students a way of learning with modern methods of work.

And pedagogically, prompting still prevails over thinking, thus leading to impeding and weakening innovation.

This shortfall has prompted universities to focus on the pedagogical foundations for students instead of preparing them for careers in photography, management, supervision, and leadership.

The current technical trend today does not see in this radical change but merely machinery and technology whose quantitative accumulation leads to an epistemological explosion; while the change happening is not just a communication case with a current phase nor a purely technological case, it’s rather an epistemological and anthropological case that created some sort of a relative break with what was prevalent in the area of knowledge and communication. This explains the generation of new concepts like the concept of the new economy that is based on innovation and knowledge rather than capital and labor.

All this raises the issue of the capacity of the training system and its adaptation with work requirements, and restoring the epistemological and moral value of the baccalaureate. And this is what requires a semi-epistemological break in the educational field.

Today, we need to build a way of thinking that goes beyond the partial physical elements that compose equipments and machinery, to reach a new vision of the universe and life with the human being at the center.

We must head towards teaching students ways of thinking, methods of access to appropriate knowledge and the ability to choose from, and deal with it, rather than learning it by heart and reciting it.

To sump up, the dissemination of knowledge in order to adapt it to new goals requires the development of strategies that rely on a new educational philosophy which is in accordance with the UNESCO’s: “Learn to know, learn to work, learn to be, and learn to share”.