No dedicated time slot, but still “media education in all classes”, announced the Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, in an interview with Apem (Association for Media Education), on the occasion of the Week of the press at school, which begins this Monday March 27. This event led by the Clemi (Liaison Center for Education and Information Media) coincides, for its 34th edition, with the opening of the International Conference on Journalism in Tours.
The deputy of the North Violette Spillebout (RE), rapporteur of the flash mission on critical media education, presents, this Tuesday morning, her proposals to strengthen discipline.
In his report Enlightenment in the digital age published in January 2022, the Bronner commission already recommended the “systematization of training in critical thinking and media and information literacy (EMI) for all students from primary school until after secondary school”. But in reality, teaching is still lacking “readability and continuity in the school career of students”, according to Serge Barbet, deputy director of Clemi.
At least one media literacy workshop per year in middle school
An opinion shared by Violette Spillebout, who recommends the creation of timetables dedicated to EMI throughout schooling. The Minister of National Education, for his part, prefers to keep the dimension “transversal”specified in a circular of January 24, 2022. His wish, however, is to impose an annual action of critical education on the media for all college students, in the form of the intervention of a journalist or the visit of an essay. “We will give an instruction to this effect to the rectors for their implementation”, assures Pap Ndiaye. Device which, in CM1, CM2 and in high school, would be recommended without being compulsory.
“I can hear that the ministry is not ready to introduce dedicated hours, but it should still be noted that this recommendation comes from the field”, supports the rapporteur of the flash mission. From the hearings that she carried out, it appears that there was too great a dilution of the responsibility for discipline, which prevents her from really enrolling in school lessons. “If it’s everyone, in fact, it’s nobody”she summarizes in her report.
Territorial disparities
And if the events during Press Week at school and the training courses offered to teachers by the Clemi meet with ever-increasing success – with a 25% increase in teachers trained over the 2021-2022 school year compared to the he previous year – there remains a significant territorial inequality in terms of access. “As soon as we move away from the areas where the newsrooms are concentrated, media education relies almost exclusively on sporadic actions launched by teachers motivated by the subject”underlines MP Violette Spillebout.
Also at the assizes of Tours, whose theme this year is “Finding a taste for information”media education is becoming a major issue well beyond the school framework. “A teaching identified at school must see the light of day, but would remain insufficient”, believes Jérôme Bouvier, president of the Journalism and citizenship association, organizer of the meetings. “Being well informed is learned, and information education must go wherever citizens are built: in families, at university, in libraries and media libraries…”
For Violette Spillebout, one of the ways to achieve this would be to declare media education a “great national cause”. This decision, which is up to Matignon, would make it possible in particular to organize public generosity campaigns and to broadcast messages free of charge on public radio or television. The Minister of National Education says he is in favor of this recommendation, already formulated in the report of the Bronner commission in January 2022 and which many actors, including the association Reporters Without Borders, are calling for.
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Flash mission: key recommendations
Violette Spillebout is co-rapporteur of the flash mission on critical media education with Philippe Ballard (RN). She drew 36 proposals from it, recorded in a report that she is presenting this Tuesday, March 28 at the International Journalism Conference in Tours, including:
Report the EMI “great national cause” (the first);
Formalize a territorial policy, especially in white areas (7e) ;
Put in place a public policy budgeted, ambitious, transversal, massive, organized, efficient (10e) ;
Number an interministerial delegate to the EMI (11e) ;
To update school programs so that MIL is well integrated everywhere (26th).