Introduction
When it comes to school failure in any country, accepted school administration practices generally identify four indicators that can be called factors of school failure: demographic, political, economic and socio-psychological factors. But when we go down to the countries where the system is not yet fully stabilized, these factors appear and are designated more clearly: we speak of factors of a social order, economic factors, psychological factors and factors of a sociological order.
In research circles, it’s practically commonplace today to assert that schooling is becoming a major problem. The causes identified are immense, and include:
- Social causes or factors
These factors include the learning situation that links teacher and pupil, and the fact that the content of knowledge does not at all take into account the child’s essential needs, which can lead to a gradual loss of interest in school activities. Then there’s the family, and the methods used to transmit information. This is why those in charge of the education system today need to look at the notion of school pedagogy with circumspection: is it the pedagogy demanded by students as they present themselves? Is it the pedagogy invented by adults for students, based on their own image of them? The problem of maladjustment finds its social response in the gap between these two questions.
- Economic causes
School is not only a place of demands, it is also extremely demanding: it requires substantial material resources that very few families are prepared to provide for their children. For decades, it has been observed that the failure of children to adapt to schooling is generally linked to a lack of material and financial resources on the part of their parents. In most poor families, this leads to a feeling of guilt that the child attending school is the source of the expenses that deprive the family of material pleasures.
- Cultural causes
Every child comes to school completely molded by his or her own culture. When this culture is naturally superimposed on that of the school, school adaptation is accelerated and the child feels propelled forward by the family’s entire affective and cultural load. On the other hand, if the family’s culture is incompatible with that of the school, the opposite effect is usually observed.
- Causes related to teacher inexperience
The inexperienced teacher is incapable of arousing the child’s desire to learn. If early learning stifles this desire, the inexperienced teacher buries it. The teacher’s role is to raise the bar by instilling in the child an irresistible desire to learn. To do this, he or she needs to be a good teacher, one who knows how to arouse the “hunger and appetite” for school activity.
- The skipped classes phenomenon
If the child is clumsily propelled into the next grade without strong support, he or she quickly loses their footing and begins to tumble. Acquisitions that have been overlooked during the preparatory period demand their due. If the school administration forgets its responsibilities, if teachers and parents persist in “pushing” the pupil, the middle years are high-risk. This is simply because, from the 1st year of CM onwards, what children need in numeracy is not just intuitive intelligence, but above all maturity. And yet, according to current psycho-pedagogical knowledge, a child who is propelled into C.E. because he has the mental age of 8 rarely has the maturity of a 7-year-old, let alone an 8-year-old.
Conclusion
The problem of school maladjustment in general, and failure in particular, is far less simple than politicians, parents, teachers and even medical specialists tend to believe. Most difficulties at school need to be studied as real symptoms that can be traced back to the evil itself, which is usually located elsewhere. This is the only way to keep schools out of the fair.
Translated from French into English by NECI BANTANGE Pacifique
