You have spent several years developing a distance-learning platform, which you are offering to institutions that may nevertheless be competitors. Why?
Diderot Education created NetCampus in response to changing student behavior: students no longer want to spend long, tedious hours sitting passively in class. Today, I am making this platform available to all my colleagues for three reasons. A matter of philosophy : I do not believe in the logic of one against all, but rather that ‘ together we go further, we are more dynamic, we are stronger.’ The thought of knowledge no longer being passed on, of teachers whose passion is to cultivate others finding themselves idle, is unbearable to me. The health crisis must not lead to intellectual isolation ; this pandemic must not be accompanied by a crisis of knowledge. No to obscurantism! We must keep knowledge circulating. A matter of intuition : I am convinced that if too many private schools close, the survivors will not benefit. They will be weakened and unable to withstand the administrative constraints of our all-powerful state. At stake is the survival of the entire private education sector, the only form of education free from national ideological constraints. A matter of esteem : I have fewer competitors than I have worthy and deserving colleagues; I know far more admirable school leaders than hostile competitors. And even so, I would rather find myself on an isolated island with competitors than alone.’In practical terms, how does the platform work?
‘ NetCampus is a website where courses can be uploaded in every format: video, text, images, audio and so on. NetCampus enables students to take online courses. School and university students can find all their administrative information there and gradually build their résumés through their internship experience. A ‘ careers ’ database records completed internships and alumni’s current jobs. It is a comprehensive platform that we connect to existing systems to make it smoother and easier to use.’Are you worried about the survival of ‘small’ private institutions that lack the resources to organize themselves to meet the challenges of this health crisis?
‘Yes, very worried; more about medium-sized institutions than small ones, which may be able to improvise a few solutions with their students. Those that are too big to improvise and too small to adapt seem to me to be in a very difficult position.’
