An audio documentary tells the story of the creation of a new school by passionate teachers

A school that would give more meaning to lessons, where decisions would be made by students and teachers and whose objective would be to include everyone, especially the most precarious, with the front: "Learn to be free". A dream come true, documented in 6 podcast episodes. And it's not in Finland this time!

by Guillaume Istace, director

Imagine a school ...

• which would display in large letters on its facade the phrase "Learn to be free";
• which would completely rethink the traditional organization of lessons to give them more meaning and transmit to the pupils the desire to learn;
• where decisions would be taken collegially by students and teachers; 
• whose objective would be to include everyone, and more particularly the most precarious students.

For seven years, the project of this school was dreamed up, thought out, imagined by a group of pedagogy enthusiasts, the Pedagonauts. With the Municipality of Saint-Gilles, near Brussels in Belgium, they have made this dream a reality.

On September 1, 2017, this school took off under the name of Integral High School Roger Lallemand.

A documented process in 6 episodes 

In the spring of 2016, the director of radio documentaries Guillaume Istace met the Pedagonauts and undertook to record them in the development of their dream school project. 

Armed with a microphone and a recorder, he followed them and captured their questions, their enthusiasm, their dismay and their inventiveness. He followed them throughout the process that led to the opening of the school. It then remained in the school during its very first year of existence. 

This documentary aims to do justice to the investment of the teaching staff and addresses in depth central questions when we talk about teaching today: creating diversity in the school, managing this mixing once it is there, modernize teaching, arouse the desire to learn in students, promote their autonomy while establishing a framework with clear rules, and more.

During 6 episodes of 25 minutes, the listener is immersed in the daily life of teachers and students. Through a few characters, the documentary tells of the confrontation of this utopian project with the reality on the ground. He gives an account of it in all its complexity, far from speeches and lessons in morality. 

“The flight from school” is the sound log of an approach with crazy ambition: to reinvent the school.

Listen to podcast (podcast) on Soundcloud here.