УДК 159.9

© 2024 Jean M. Gnahore *,

* PhD, Alassane Ouattara University (Bouaké, Ivory Coast),

е-mail: digbeutij@gmail.com

Annotation: The author presents the results of an analysis of the problem of organizing emulation days in regional schools in Ivory Coast, as well as empirical data obtained during the study. The thesis is developing that the level of organization of emulation days in this district is low, which is the result of a small number of organized sessions.

Key words: emulations; normal schools; schools; education; Ivory Coast.

Проблема организации соревнований в региональных школах Кот-д'Ивуара

© 2024 Жан М. Гнахоре *,

* доктор философии, Университет Алассана Уаттары (Буаке, Кот-д’Ивуар)

е-mail: digbeutij@gmail.com

Аннотация: Автор представляет результаты анализа проблемы организации дней эмуляции в региональных школах в Кот-д’Ивуар, а так же полученные в ходе исследования эмпирические данные. Развивается тезис, что уровень организации дней эмуляции в этом округе низкий, что является результатом небольшого количества организованных сессий.

         Ключевые слова: эмуляция; нормальные школы школы; образование; Конго.

Introduction

Competition between people is an important factor in the development of interpersonal relationships in society. It is known that the spirit of competition in the school environment is the key to the productive development of new knowledge and the success of students. To revitalize a classroom or educational institution, school principals introduce incentives into school practice, including rewards, praise, and imitation. From this point of view, the school should protect secularism, tolerance, respect for others. It should welcome everyone and be a place of civility. She must ensure equality for all, uphold her values ​​to be the foundation of society, and then continue to serve the society. With all these incentives introduced by education leaders, we thought we would talk about school emulation in Cote d'Ivoire. In this paper I will present the results of the organization and how emulation is being carried out in schools in one district of the country, highlighting the educational values ​​and pointing out the disadvantages that may arise as a result of this activity.

It is known that in ancient Greece, there was almost no place for competition in schools and only a few centuries later, in Roman schools, those who performed well were systematically rewarded. The Jesuit school began to actively introduce emulation as a technology into practice. It was the Jesuits who invented crosses, ribbons, badges, honor boards, public congratulations, displays of prize-winning works, display of brilliant students at public meetings where parents and friends come to applaud them, presentation of prizes either during the year for successful work or at the end of the year, during It's time for the big awards ceremony. The names of the winners were then to be announced publicly with the greatest possible pomp. In general, the Congolese school has not opted for imitation for a long time. The establishment of a school competition follows official guidelines. The highest honor for very bright students was inclusion in the class group. Ministerial directives from the mid-1980s of the 20th century on emulation measures to be introduced in schools stipulated that, as part of the search for ways and means that could create conditions for improving the functioning of the education system in Côte d'Ivoire, there seemed an urgent need to establish a number of measures encouragement and imitation in normal schools, which concern both teachers and their leaders and students at different levels of education, including institutions as legal entities. These measures were taken to create conditions for improving the functioning of the education system in Côte d'Ivoire. These measures were aimed at honoring through colorful ceremonies the most deserving of our students through their congratulations presented publicly, travel offers, various awards and publication in newspapers of the names of the best students of the republic.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a thesis became widespread among the educational leadership of Côte d'Ivoire that it was important for the government to regain its share of the emulation system, so as not to leave it in the hands of private partners when updating these measures. Indeed, the government began organizing annual school competitions in the country. As part of the implementation of this policy, the Ministry of Education and Literacy of Côte d'Ivoire has strengthened its efforts to keep girls in school. Competitions were organized at the end of each school year to reward the best students. School Competition Days were established in secondary schools in Côte d’Ivoire. This competition, which is held every year at the end of the semester at the faculties and solemnly at the national level at the end of the academic year, concerns the following participants: students, teachers, administrative staff. So it was about encouraging young people to work hard and hard so that they would compete fairly and republicanly with their classmates and peers in the hope of emerging years later among the group of people who would do the best. This competition concerned not only students, but also heads of institutions and their employees. Concluding the initiative, the Minister of Education and Literacy applauded the work done by the Literacy Coordinators. Thus, rewarding the best students is an old tradition deeply rooted in the life of schools in Côte d'Ivoire. Thus, the best students selected from public schools across the country, as well as their sponsors, were presented to the press in 2018 by the President of the Education Foundation. Therefore, in Côte d'Ivoire, the school competition must be organized in all school districts. However, in some school districts emulation is not part of institutional practice, its rarity or, better yet, its absence in recent years has led us in this article to focus our research on identifying barriers associated with the lack of this institutional commitment. Therefore, since we cannot answer for the organizers, we decided to conduct an on-site study to find answers to this question. This study therefore focuses on the organization of school competition, in particular the reasons for the lack of competition practice, its consequences and possible solutions to achieve compliance with official texts in one school district in Côte d'Ivoire.

We organized a survey of principals of normal regional schools, during which we tested the following hypothesis: that the low level of performance on competition days in the school district is due to a lack of understanding of the importance of competitions and school principals’ ignorance of official texts. The main objectives that we want to achieve in this study are: 1) to determine the level of performance of school emulation days; 2) to identify the perceived reasons for the non-organization of school emulation days; 3) to propose reliable solutions to involve managers and teachers in organizing school competition days.

In our opinion, emulation is not a copy, because the one who copies identifies himself with another. That is, emulation involves the development in students of self-esteem, respect for others, and it is born when the student realizes his strengths, wanting to do the same as another or better than him. This is a feeling that leads to equaling or surpassing someone in merit, knowledge, and work. Edouard Jacoulet in his book “Means of Imitation in Primary Education” notes that “every time we encourage a child, praise him, even from his tender childhood, we find ourselves faced with a form of imitation. Thus, all behavior of minors is often driven by the desire to please for the purpose of reward. A wise teacher should not neglect this detail when communicating with children, since this imitation is necessary for them to be affectionate. Another form of competition is born at school - the competition of honor. This challenges common sense teaching because while championing merit is not about ridiculing the less good. On the contrary, we should encourage fair competition, know how to reward the best and encourage others to do better in the near future. This form of emulation can be performed daily. In terms of compensation, it would be best to avoid monetary emulation, especially at the entry level. Do not distort the competition by unfair distribution of prizes. Likewise, not only do you have priority based on ranking, but you also reward goodwill, progress, and diligence. It would be necessary to encourage, first of all, competition for the sake of honor, and not for the sake of good. The only thing that matters above all else is merit, not reward. The owner must monitor this to prevent a slide into imitation of evil. Competition has always been present in human life. It exists in any form of encouragement, applause... at school or at home. This competition for affection is twofold: a competition for honor with prizes, and also a competition for money. To be less dangerous, these competitions must also encourage attendance and good behavior. In short, competition as a means of arousing laudable rivalry between children should in no case be confused at the level of children with the imitation of not only good, but also evil. Emulation is closely related to the existence of classes. It is used to control students' behavior and motivate them to learn.

It is known that competition is valued in different ways. Some see it as a way to stimulate energy and stimulate effort, while others condemn it as dangerous fuel for pride. In reality, these two assessments are about imitation. Seen as such, it is a laudable desire to equal, to surpass, merit, virtue, that which we admire in others. At the same time, it is confused with vanity and envy. In fact, what she is looking for above all is rather dignity; and therefore deserves it. In this sense, competition strives for nobility, legitimacy, even if it occurs through the need to imitate the other; moreover, this is imitation of a good student in the direction of progress. It was through competition that talent blossomed. This led to industrial marvels because each wanted to outdo the other. It is she who leads the world towards a global village, often towards the same ideal. There were predecessors in the field of education: Saint Geronimo, who advised the girl to communicate with her other study comrades in order to receive an education; J.F. de Gonzaga who fought his mentor's laziness by forcing him to run around with other children. Moreover, the Jesuits believed that their efforts should be aimed at making people love this work through constant and kind imitation. To do this, they divided their class into two camps, each of which had a champion, a leader. And these classes held debates, the questions and answers of which raised everyone's level. Under these conditions, they only managed to improve their reasoning, practically without using the whip. Thus, the main motive of rivalry is in no way to humiliate the competitor, but rather to derive happiness from receiving satisfaction, because rivalry breeds only noble rivalry, as Dupanloup said, quoted by the Marist Brothers, whose disciples exclaimed: “ I have no enemies, I have rivals whom I love.” This was the motto of competitive fighting. Emulation has its pros and cons. But if well organized, it remains a necessary incentive to awaken children's enthusiasm for work. The current state of educational research demonstrates the negative impact that emulation systems currently in use have on student motivation in Canada. It is in this context of struggling or dropping out of school that it is important to change teachers' practices in terms of classroom management. W. Glosser, in his book “The School of Quality,” argues that you need to be a good teacher, although teaching is perhaps the most difficult of all professions in our society.

Our study was conducted in a school district in Côte d'Ivoire. Currently, in the territory of the desired school district there are 35 schools, including 30 public and 5 private, with 5,934 students, including 1,928 girls. The sample of subjects included all 35 principals and two administrators, as well as two more - the counselor, the director of elementary education. Among the subjects, there were 8 female directors and four female administrators. Thus, we obtained two types of population consisting of 39 subjects. We used documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to collect data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in the respective subjects' offices and questions focused on: the importance of competition, availability and knowledge of competition texts, the conduct of School Competition Days and reasons for failure. The questionnaire was developed for school principals and was distributed online within a few days.

It was found that principals say that parents expect imitation information about their children's creativity, while others, on the other hand, say that it is a moment of reconnection with teachers. At the teacher level, it is time to judge the relevance of their work. At the learner level, this is motivation. From this table it can be seen that the majority of directors admit that competition leads to motivation of students and teachers (88.3%), however, 13.5% do not recognize that competition leads to increased motivation of students. It turned out that all 26 principals claim that competition contributes to student success, but nine do not admit this.

Discussion and conclusion

After studying all the reports received, it turned out that emulation measures are mentioned in these documents, but in practice their implementation is ineffective. In short, this proves the lack of attention to academic competition on the part of educational leaders and administrators who are not aware that competition is part of institutional practice. But the competition helps create the Ivory Coast's elite. This is also a response to a deep concern, that is, building the country. All respondents admitted that they did not know about the existence of an updated text about the competition. All respondents recognized the importance of emulation in school in encouraging, motivating and incentivizing the best students and good workers to achieve good results, and pushing them to go further and better towards higher grades. The vast majority of those surveyed (95%) believe that competition is currently a serious problem and ask that the state increase funding for this activity, so that schools can organize emulation on a regular basis, and that principals have the desire and initiative to write to the political body. administrative bodies and other social partners for the good organization of activities.

To conclude our reflections, let us remember that we began with the concern that competition is a stimulus that plays an important role in the Congolese primary education system. We set ourselves the following tasks: to establish the fact and assess the scale of the organization of School Competition Days; identify the alleged reasons for the non-organization of school Olympiads; to help school principals understand the importance of school competition days and pave the way for more effective application of the instructions of educational leaders on the organization of school competition days. The results obtained revealed the level of emulation achievement in one of the school districts in Côte d'Ivoire. The documentary method through activity reports and annual reports shows us that these activities are mentioned in these documents, but in practice the implementation is not effective. During interviews with managers, it turned out that they did not know the text regulating the organization of competitions. The hypotheses of our research were confirmed, government authorities and school management were held accountable. We therefore call on those responsible for the Ivorian education system at all levels, the political-administrative authorities and social partners to reinstate the School Competition Days, since this event is one of the best guidelines, one of the incentives that we use.

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