Necessary transformation or safe permanence? A philosophical approach to the desire for change

Abstract

What is proposed is a meditation on the phrase 'transformation of the educational system', paying attention to the sense of the words, and showing what the desire for educational change can reveal. After explaining to what extent 'educational system' is a quasi-oxymoron, the meaning of 'transformation' has to be compared to those of revolution and utopia. The claim to be transforming the educational system is an attempt to adapt education to social and political situations and constraints. The case of the Langevin-Wallon project in France, which was never applied, helps when wondering what has to be adapted to what. What sort of reciprocity is there between school and society? The organisation of knowledge itself can be submitted to a transformation. Jeremy Bentham's Chrestomathia expresses such a conception through an unheeded and somehow utopian project. The desire for something new is in itself problematical, and the very fact of it being new cannot be an aim.