Letters to the editor - Marco Polli
This Sunday, May 15, the people of Geneva rejected 50,83% the reform of the orientation cycle (secondary school I) proposed by the Conseil d'Etat, which provided for mixed classes instead of classes by level. In this letter to the editor, actor and director Marco Polli, former president of the Geneva Secondary Teachers' Union and of the Commission Langues Vivantes, welcomes this result and calls for solutions to what he sees as the central problem: illiteracy.
Did you say «equal opportunities»? It's been 34 years since the Conseil d'Etat pointed out that «debates about structures can only distract attention from the essential issues», and that «the future of the school lies in recognizing the primacy of pedagogical issues». The real victims of «inequality of opportunity» are the 20% young people who remain illiterate at the age of 15, a handicap that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Because «not knowing how to read and write well enough is a factor of social, cultural and economic exclusion», warned the Federal Council in its Message culture 2011. However, since the PISA2000 survey revealed the extent of this problem, no serious action has been taken at the level where it should have been.
What Geneva's schools need is not «heterogeneity» and «inclusion», but a school policy that tackles the root cause of the exclusion of one in five young people: illiteracy. Sorry to bring it up again, but it's essential. To «aim to correct inequalities in pupils» chances of academic success from the earliest years of school", as the Public Education Act, However, these inequalities need to be taken into account rather than denied. It's at the end of the first primary cycle, at the age of 8, that we need to identify future illiterates through a whole range of means, and then put in place an appropriate teaching approach. But let's not kid ourselves: it's a long-term undertaking that requires everyone's cooperation. And it currently faces two major obstacles...
Read also | Tribune: «How about finally tackling illiteracy in Switzerland?»
Student violence and the freezing of the institution
One is a deteriorating school climate. Two surveys conducted in 2012 in Geneva by the Service de la recherche en éducation (SRED) and its counterpart in Valais have now quantified between 5% and 10% of «weekly victims of serious harassment by their fellow students». In other words, thousands of young people. The other obstacle is internal to the institution: the freezing, since the turn of the century, of the rich set of participatory mechanisms that linked the DIP management to the teaching profession.
The fight against illiteracy and violence in schools will only be possible if healthy collaboration is re-established within the DIP. And by mobilizing the teaching profession, which is the primary actor in the delivery of public education, around real projects.
French 
German 
English