News & Weekly Letters

Since there was no high school in the village in L’Ardèche where I grew up, I headed off to boarding school—50km from home—when I was 15. My father had the unenviable task of dragging me out of bed every Monday morning at 5 a.m. and driving me to the village square, where the school bus waited (with, incredibly, everyone smoking on board). I came home every Friday evening to spend the weekend with my family. When you arrive at a boarding school with 80 boys aged between 15 and 18, you learn pretty quickly that there is a whole set of unwritten rules you need to follow if you want to make your life easier.

This week, high school students in France are on strike. As you are no doubt aware, they are protesting their learning conditions: overcrowded classrooms, no air conditioning, aging facilities, absent teachers who are either poorly replaced or not replaced at all, interminable school days, and uncertain prospects for higher education because of Parcoursup, the platform used to apply to universities and colleges, which has never really managed to win people over, leaving too many students with the impression—rightly or wrongly—that the doors to their future are already closed.

After exploring two broad topics—PISA and AI—over the past couple of weeks, it’s time to bring things back to what has been happening at The École. For many of our Elementary and Middle School students, that has meant quite a few assessments—in both French and English. I know these aren’t exactly the highlight of the children’s week—and they’re not exactly the teachers’ favorite either (a special shout-out to our STRIVE teachers, who dedicated a considerable amount of their time to ensuring the process ran smoothly!) Fortunately, parents came to the rescue on Wednesday with treats from 80 countries, lifting all our spirits.

I could write much more about PISA—and probably will in the weeks ahead—because the subject is so vast and there are plenty of avenues to explore. I’ve also received some fascinating feedback about last week’s letter, so I’ll definitely return to the subject. But in my back-to-school letter, I mentioned another hugely important topic—one that many of you have been asking about: the role of artificial intelligence in education. It’s almost an existential question at this point—one that is increasingly tricky to grasp because the speed at which the technology is evolving expands the realm of possibility daily. It’s a little like changing the rules of a game while you’re in the middle of playing it: what was banned before suddenly isn’t, and there’s no longer any rhyme or reason to what you are doing.

Just when I thought I had prepared for every eventuality and had an answer to everything this back-to-school season, two things happened back-to-back: New York City’s mayor announced a ban on AI in the city’s elementary and middle schools, and the latest, rather dismal, PISA results were released. Naturally, both are talking points within our community—I’ve been asked about them every day at the door (and at the picnic, which was once again a great success!). So I thought I would use the weekly letter format to explore both subjects with you, starting this week with the PISA tests and some initial conclusions we might draw for The École.