EDUCATION

This is a school bag. The truth is, I've always loved school. I've always been excited by the idea of leaving a classroom, convinced that my mind had acquired something new. But, of course, some moments were more confronting than others; I had quickly fallen behind in math, I don't know what 'mole' is in physics, and I only have bits of Spanish left, but I still remember those former years with fondness, that exhilaration of discovering concepts. Is that why I became a teacher? Is that why I founded schools? Undoubtedly, but it wasn't just that. I believe that we urgently need to mobilize this joy of learning outside of schools, outside of traditional courses, and outside of curricula. The challenge is for this feeling to become that of life itself when we explore it, when we dare, when we talk to each other, when we write to each other, when we draw, when we read things, when we garden, when we contemplate, when we walk, when we kick a ball, when we dream, when we kiss, when we smell, when we eat, when we tinker. When the chaos of life catches you in the gut, and you lie in bed at night telling yourself that you're different from the day before, that your brain has changed from interactions with the outside world. No algorithm or artificial intelligence will be able to replace that feeling, the feeling of having been nurtured by the world.

"The whole future of intelligence depends on education, or rather on the teaching of all kinds that minds receive (...) But let's not forget that our whole life can be seen as an education that is no longer organized, or even organizable, but, on the contrary, essentially disordered, consisting of all the impressions and good or bad acquisitions we owe to life itself. The school is not alone in educating young people." - Paul Valéry.

I wish you a good start in life.

Marie Robert is an author and philosophy teacher. As the head of Montessori schools, she created @philosophyissexy to share her philosophical reflections daily.

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