Schools and positivism

Every month, youtuber Ralph Müller delivers his scathing analysis of a phenomenon typical of the times. This month, he discusses the challenges facing education in the age of artificial intelligence, and questions the role of schools in the face of positivism.

Some declare higher education obsolete and even contrary to the interests of the individual. Artificial intelligence (AI) would require education to reinvent itself from top to bottom, unless it simply invites it to bow out.^[1]. As it prepares to replace humans in almost all cognitive tasks, education as we understand it and the knowledge it imparts will soon be worthless, and all that's left for us to do is to become AI specialists, capable of assisting AI or taking advantage of it to set up start-ups. This position, still marginal today, risks gaining ground and invites us to question what learning is all about - all the more so if, like me, you consider it stupid and harmful.

As Alain wrote, «Man is never formed by solitary experience; [...] his first experiences are of man and of the human order, on which he first depends directly [...]».»^[2]. The world is first shown and named to the child, who develops his or her presence to things against the backdrop of this primitive education. Education, then, is not just a matter of transmitting information, nor is it just a question of quantifiable knowledge - this is not even its major vocation.

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The utilitarian vision of education reduces it to a practice whose sole aim is to make the individual «flexible» and always «adapted» to the changing reality of the market. It is entirely subservient to an ideal of immediate, commensurable optimization and performance, implying that it neglects any knowledge that cannot be directly translated into palpable gain. The new discrediting of schools is the latest avatar of materialism.

The fact is, a society of «autonomous» individuals can only be anomic. If education is indeed to be rethought, it must remain a sanctuary, sheltered from and at odds with the logics that govern the economy, work and leisure. It must be unchanging in its uplifting mandate, which cannot remain if it bends to rhythms that are hostile to it. Training individuals to adapt to today's market means condemning them to obsolescence. To train critical minds is to prepare them for all possible futures.

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Schools - whether primary or university - are not just places where knowledge is imparted, but also where socialization takes place, where virtues of all kinds are learned in an unquantifiable way. It's at school that we learn certain essential forms of respect (for hierarchies, for example) and rapport with others, and it's at school that we (ideally) imbibe a sense of camaraderie and sharing. It is perhaps the last place where something like a «national spirit» can still be formed, not in the nationalist sense, but in the minimal sense of a sense of belonging to a community broader than that of the family.

Finally, the school is the ideal place for emulation and that unique and precious feeling of admiration. Rather than trying to adapt to blind technologies, we need to rehabilitate the figure of the master, give teachers back the freedom to defend good taste, and give schools the mandate to shape judgment. Positivism is in the process of giving birth to a new form of credulity and barbarism.

The trainer Ralph Müller delivers his scathing analysis of a social phenomenon in each issue. Watch his videos on the YouTube channel «La Cartouche».

You have just read a column published in our print edition (Le Regard Libre N°123).

^[1]See Laurent Alexandre and Olivier Babeau, Stop studying. Learning differently in the age of AI (Buchet-Chastel, 2025).

^[2]«Why still learn? A l'heure du relativisme et de l'AI» (PUF, Cities N° 103).