The director

The transmission takes place through the school, to which we entrust our children for many years. At home, they are often on their cell phones, and so are we – don’t blame them. At school, it’s different: after putting down the phone, they are fully available in mind and body: colleges and high schools have become one of the only places of vertical transmission: from teacher to student. Long live the school and the hussars of the Republic that are the principals, who are responsible for educating as much as instructing, thanks to the teachers, whose outstanding figures I continue to cite throughout my pages.

I mentioned my parents Armand and Janine Abécassis, the philosophy teachers Norbert Engel, from Strasbourg, and Christophe Régnier, from the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris. Today I will talk about Joël Bianco, headmaster of Louis-le-Grand, who like them did not do this job by chance. Meaning, in the teaching profession, is obvious. Of a life devoted to transmission, who wouldn’t? But who would have the courage, and the will? As far back as his career goes, the headmaster has sought a way, a faith, so that students like to read and cultivate themselves, even and especially the scientists and mathematicians who speak in our society, and must articulate their thinking . He sees his mission to dispense knowledge as being even more essential at a time when the individual is king, and as a commitment to the collective. And I find, as with my parents, teachers and school principals, the passion of the students, year after year, to carry them, raise them as their name suggests.

At Lycée Louis-le-Grand, a temple of knowledge, a form of positive discrimination is practiced to recruit students from all social backgrounds in order to give them a chance to excel. The headmaster sees his job as an osteopath who will feel the tensions within the establishment and press where it is necessary for it to pass, so that there is no more pain, so that this living body have no more embarrassment or harm and that it can continue on its way, from year to year, from generation to generation, without weakening, without rusting. Ensure that everyone is well, at all levels, that each teacher is respected, with their method, their uniqueness because everyone has their own way of teaching, and establish a relationship of trust more than authority, just as with children.

The teachers, no one rewards them, except the students, when they see the flame light up in their eyes, and they receive a gift at the end of the year – to which the principal is not entitled. Who knows his name, his face, his look? Who realizes that behind his desk upstairs, where old-fashioned bound books have been stored for ages, the future of the country is at stake? No one knows that to steer this ship, which constantly changes course as new ministries come along, you need patience and reflection, balance and intelligence. Nobody congratulates the principals, the directors, these professions without which we are nothing, nothing but empty shells, wretches of mind and heart, men without quality.

No one understands how much teaching is a profession. A profession like any other, in the sense that only those who have learned it can exercise it. A job like no other in the sense that it involves transmitting knowledge and making this big business called school work. Faced with the avalanche of emails addressed to him, especially during the panic related to Parcoursup, he replied to each one, because it was necessary to admit the change of era and to take its new paths. He estimates the evolution of Parcoursup and regrets that the system is not understood, that people are so eager to have results, that they exert such pressure on themselves and on their offspring – when it is enough sometimes to wait, as in life.

But what changes is that no one supports a refusal. It is a question of reassuring, of explaining that behind the algorithm there are men and women who examine each file, that not everything is left to the machine. Since the Covid, people have become aware of the importance of learning. It will be necessary to recognize one day the excellence of the school which raises, which trains men, women of value. That excellence is deserved, but also that it has the merit of being, of lasting, of adapting. We can criticize the system but why not celebrate what elevates, and those who elevate? And in the middle of this large building, there is a marvelous garden where it is good to take the shade sheltered from the sun. They work discreetly. They act for the transmission. They train minds, quietly. But they have charge of soul, charge of man: this profession is the heart of the world. Transmission is the beating heart of our lives.

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