And in Education… an academic. This Friday, the historian specializing in the United States and current director general of the Palais de la Porte Dorée was appointed to succeed Jean-Michel Banquer as Minister of National Education and Youth
This renowned historian, who had called to vote for François Hollande in 2012, will in particular have to ensure the return of mathematics to the common core in high school, an unfinished reform of his predecessor.
By becoming minister of Emmanuel Macron, Pap Ndiaye moves away a little more from the benches of Sciences-po, where he was a professor before being chosen by Emmanuel Macron to direct the museum of Museum of immigration and the tropical aquarium of the Golden Gate (12th century).
An academic sensitive to issues of diversity and immigration
The assumption of office in March 2021 of this supporter of the consensus who left to study the black question in the United States before becoming a professor at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) had been perceived as a gesture of appeasement by Emmanuel Macron, on the question of memories of colonization and identity tensions.
This appointment had earned the native of Hauts-de-Seine the front page of the New York Times. Questioned on this subject by Le Parisien, the academic sensitive to questions of diversity and immigration had indicated that he wanted to “maintain and embellish the monument”, a vestige of “colonial propaganda”, while showing “that he was throwing a modest veil on violence, forced labor, colonial realities”.
Read also“I feel at home here”: Pap Ndiaye, new director of the Palais de la Porte-Dorée in Paris
The one who is described as moderate by his university colleagues replaces a Jean-Michel Blanquer destroyer of the Americanization of the social sciences and of “Islamo-leftism”, who had to backtrack in his high school reform, after a fall of the level in mathematics of French students and a sharp drop in the presence of girls in science courses
Before the start of the 2022 school year, Pap Ndiaye will notably have to complete the return of mathematics to the common core, announced by his predecessor. The task promises to be difficult: on Tuesday, Bruno Bobkiewicz, general secretary of the main union of school heads (SNPDEN), had indicated that the “timing” of this reform was “nonsense”.
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