Fuctional Illiteracy as an Axiological Problem

Abstract

It is not only the illiteracy found in today’s knowledge societies, including developed countries, but also its reproduction in new generations that determines the relevance of this research. In France, one of the leading countries in Europe and the world, for decades there has been a decline in the level of general education. The trend continues despite the constant reforms of the education system, including those aimed, as their developers believe, at facilitating and updating learning. Programs in French, mathematics, history, and literature were especially lightened, or simplified, but fewer and fewer schoolchildren cope with them. University professors state that the number of students who experience difficulties in reading, writing and speaking their thoughts is growing. Official statistics report millions of functionally illiterate people who have left school. The purpose of this research is to analyze the axiological components of the French general education reforms and to study the philosophical reflections of the trend by the professional community. To exemplify and illustrate the problem there were chosen works by Barbara Lefebvre and Réne Chiche devoted to a detailed analysis of the situation in French education as of today with the focus on school education. The article aims to provide the specified data on the dynamic of functional illiteracy in France, to identify the axiological dominants that lie behind the modern reform, and to give a comprehensive analysis of the ideas expressed in the books of B. Lefebvre Génération «J'ai le droit»: La faillite de notre éducation and R. Chiche La désinstruction nationale. In both cases the authors attempt to undertake a philosophical understanding of the modern school education as one of the mechanisms for the transmission of culture that supports the formation of personality in the process of socialization. Both books clearly convey the idea that politically engaged reforms of public education, consciously or unconsciously ignoring the need to reflect on the real axiological foundations on which they are built, bring about the prospects for new, including latent, social risks.