Les compétences de base pour le XXIe siècle. Éducation : pour une approche systémique du changement

Basic Competencies for the 21st century. Education: for a Systemic Approach to Change
Hopes held by the French for the schooling system are matched only by their disappointment. Young people who leave school more or less successfully, face bleak prospects for professional and social inclusion.
For twenty years, reforms have been introduced which aimed to improve operations, diversify channels, modify programs, modernize methods. And yet criticisms of our system of education keep recurring. It does indeed face contradictory demands and major challenges, the result of a conjunction of changing external conditions and the complexity of the education system itself.
Alain Michel, while bearing in mind all these issues, sketches a strategy for change which, by making use of the diversity of factors and local situations, should allow the school system to fulfill its main mission: the transmission of basic competencies (cognitive and non cognitive), a “minimal cultural wage”. This would be essential to help students integrate and grow in the society of tomorrow.