News & Weekly Letters

For the past few years, we’ve had ringside seats to a power struggle in the world of education between two fields of thought that we can summarize thus: in the red corner, those who think that teaching is an art, and in the blue corner, those who think it is a science. The blue corner has gained considerable influence recently. The lack of theoretical training for teachers in cognitive learning processes is increasingly surprising. How, one wonders, can anyone teach a child anything without a grasp of how the brain receives and processes information? Is it possible to teach without a basic understanding of neuroscience?

On Tuesday morning you learned that Rachel Loble is leaving The École at the end of this school year. Before I write another word, I would like, on behalf of the entire team, to wish her, Jules, and Stefan all the very best for their new adventure. I would particularly like to thank Rachel for the last two years during which an enormous amount of her energy was directed toward ensuring that our students and staff could work in the best possible conditions despite the pandemic that was raging around us.

I am writing to you earlier than usual this week as once again we find ourselves facing our worst nightmare. 21 dead in an elementary school. 19 10-year-olds,—all in 4th grade—and 2 adults. We will be asked to discuss the tragedy with our students. We will answer that call. We will try to explain the unexplainable and we will try to make sense of the senseless. With all the strength we have left, we will comfort and reassure. We will—it is our job—draw lessons. What are they?

Who could have guessed that a couple of transatlantic flights and three days with 500+ colleagues in a windowless auditorium were the ideal ingredients for catching COVID?  Everyone, you answer? After managing to avoid getting sick for more than two years, I had begun to flirt with the notion that I was invincible—that a genetic mutation made me resistant to every wave and variant. Needless to say, I was very, very wrong—I’ve been knocked out by the virus for almost a week now.

Rumor has it that I went to Marrakech last week to catch some rays, leaving the rest of you here in the rain and cold of this endless New York winter. The rumors are greatly exaggerated! As I mentioned last Friday, I went to my first conference in more than two years, to meet my colleagues from the MLF, which is celebrating its 120th anniversary this year. More than 500 of us came together at the International University of Rabat, where there were 30+ seminars and 40+ workshops on the agenda, all centered on the theme “The World Afterward.”