Georgette Vivier

Georgette Vivier PhD
1st Special Advisor for Educational Reform
In office January 30, 1966 – January 17, 1969
Prime Minister	Emmanuel Jenet
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Olivier Godechot-Bliss
Personal details
Born	Georgette Guriev
Died	September 20, 1973(1973-09-20) (aged 76)
Political party	Laeralian National Congress
Spouse(s)	Jean-Pierre Vivier
Children	Denise Vivier
Mother	Virginie Guriev
Father	Philippe Guriev
Education	Rodelle College (BA), University of Laeralsford (PhD)
Profession	Academic, school administrator, educational reformer

Georgette Vivier was a Laeralian academic and social and educational reformer who led the shift to embrace humanistic K-12 education in Laeral. During a prolific career spanning the mid-20th century, Vivier advocated for what she referred to as "Humanistic Schooling," aimed at promoting critical thinking as opposed to rote learning in K-12 education, particularly through the use of oral examinations as a tool of learning assessment. Vivier's philosophy is now leading at the pre-university level in Laeralian education and has seen some adoption abroad, with proponents claiming that Humanistic Schooling produces more capable and innovative thinkers, yet has been criticized by detractors as socially divisive and Arrivée-centric.

Early Life

Georgette Vivier was born Georgette Guriev to a wealthy family in Risoul, Aumont in 1897. Her father Philippe was the owner of a watchmaking company, and Georgette, the third child and only daughter, enjoyed a privileged existence and studied under a series of tutors alongside her brothers. Unusually for a Laeralian woman of her generation, she studied science, mathematics, and the social sciences alongside the traditionally-feminine fields of literature and foreign language. Georgette excelled academically and was close to her father, who sponsored her education at the all-women's Rodelle College, where she graduated with a degree in Literature in 1922.

Educational Career

After graduating, Vivier was anxious to avoid returning to Risoul, which she found stifling, and a life of domesticity. Vivier instead found employment as a teacher due to the disruption caused by the Laeralian Revolution, and taught reading and mathematics at a girl's school in Marist, Choisel. She later moved to Laeralsford as Headmistress of a school largely serving civil servants' daughters, where she met her husband Jean-Pierre, a Fellsian War veteran whose close ties to the government had allowed him to become a wealthy banker. Their marriage in 1930, followed by his 1935 death, left Vivier one of the wealthiest widows in Laeral. Although raising her daughter Denise as a single mother was a strain on her, Vivier ultimately attended the University of Laeralsford, becoming one of the first women in Laeral to attain a PhD.

In 1941, Vivier was appointed as Headmistress of Valady Comprehensive School, a school in Laeralsford province aimed at providing social mobility for the children of migrants who had traveled to Laeralsford in search of economic opportunities. In this capacity, Vivier enjoyed a substantial budget and largely free rein over the school due to her close ties to influential government officials. At Valady, Vivier was able to develop the philosophy and practices which would eventually become Humanistic Schooling.

The ascension of Sun Jia-wei, who held a personal interest in educational reform, to the Laeralian presidency in 1947 offered Vivier the opportunity to see her ideas implemented. Sun and Vivier had met in 1945 during Vivier's tenure as Headmistress of Valady Comprehensive School and had maintained a steady correspondence. Sun's political liberalization meant that criticisms of government policy during the early Republic were fully tolerated for the first time, which gradually trickled into some civics classrooms. Under President Sun's tenure, nationwide standardized testing was adopted for tertiary students for the first time. In 1951, Vivier published her first book, Tertiary Instruction as a Science, which achieved a broad readership among professionals in the education field. Her 1956 book Humanistic Schooling was the book which came to define her academic policies and was widely read. She would later expand on her philosophies through journal articles and her third and final book, The Aesthetics of Successful Schooling. She was an advisor on education issues to Prime Minister Emmanuel Jenet and his minister of education, with the title Special Advisor for Educational Reform, from 1966 to 1969, where many of her policies of Humanistic Schooling were made state practice. Vivier remained active in the field of education studies during and after her tenure in government, until immediately prior to her death in 1973.

Humanistic Schooling

Vivier had mixed feelings on the educational philosophy of the Republican Era. Although pleased with the state's early efforts to improve literacy rates and the removal of religion from the academic curriculum, she viewed these steps as insufficient and was also horrified with the heavy-handed tone of history and civic education, which was particularly prone to political interference meant to bolster citizens' loyalty to the revolutionary state and Gramontist principles. Methods of instruction in many classrooms had scarcely changed from the pre-revolutionary period, as students were often made to recite lessons in unison and memorize works of literature and speeches by historical figures.

A key focus of rationalist academic reformers of the late Republican Era was in instituting standardized testing. The Higher Education Student Selection Exam (SEES, commonly known as le batterie), based on tests developed for applicants for military officer training at Pont Caprilieu, was initiated in 1937 to provide an objective basis for university student examination, and is still in use in the present day as a primary factor in university admissions, and proponents of expanded testing called for its use at the K-12 level as well. Vivier aligned with these reformers, but felt that the multiple-choice format used as a metric of assessment was a flawed yardstick. She was also certain that allowing students to advance to the next grade each year without assessment of their learning meant that some students floundered, and at Valady Comprehensive School, instituted mid-year and end-of-year assessments that often resulted in students being held back.

Vivier's philosophy of Humanistic Schooling held that in the aftermath of the ideological rigidity of the Republican Era, Laeral's new regime needed to place a premium on independent thinking. The violence of the Bloody Summer only strengthened her commitment, as she believed that the bloodshed caused by the failed coup was the direct result of Laeralites being unable to think for themselves. Education promoting critical thinking, she believed, would empower future generations to overcome poverty and resist ideological indoctrination.

Drawing on methods of instruction used in Minjian temple education, Vivier embraced the use of oral assessments as central to assessing student progress. Being able to speak eloquently on a subject, Vivier believed, was the truest marker of academic mastery. She called for oral examinations to be used throughout K-12 education as a primary metric of assessment alongside written exams, while calling for an end to multiple-choice testing. Discussion was to be a primary in-class activity, as well as exercises and experiments meant to allow students to engage firsthand with the topic under study. Second language education was another goal of Vivier's.

Humanistic Schooling also included a heavy focus on bettering the classroom environment. According to Vivier, mutual respect between students and teachers was crucial to fostering learning, and her influence is largely responsible for the modern Laeralian practice of teachers shaking hands with their students at the start of class each day. Vivier opposed the prefect system and other methods which placed discipline of students in the hands of one another, and similarly dismissed the idea of separate gifted education. Vivier believed that clean, well-ventilated classrooms were important for fostering learning and called for students to be involved in school beautification projects; under the model of the Valady Comprehensive School, many schools incorporated central gardens into their floor plans. She also opposed school uniforms as detrimental to student individuality.

Criticism

Humanistic Schooling's focus on individual oral examinations has been criticized as unsuitable for autistic students as well as those with social anxiety. Some scholars have also called Humanistic Schooling as culturally unsuitable for Rén students due to its intense focus on individualism, although such discussions are fraught with controversy, particularly as scholars in the Gramontist tradition view such race essentialism as frivolous.

Today, Humanistic Schooling is the primary, yet not dominant, educational philosophy in Laeral. It is typically seen in opposition to Moralist Education, the dominant philosophy prior to the emergence of Humanistic Schooling, and the contemporary politicization of issues such as school uniform adoption, student discipline, and gifted education can be understood as a conflict between Humanistic and Moralist education. Humanistic Schooling is sometimes associated with Gramontism given its promotion by late Republican figures such as Sun Jia-wei, yet scholars generally disagree, pointing to the distinctions in particular between Gramontism's national approach to civic education and Humanistic Schooling's liberal approach.

Legacy

Georgette Vivier was honored on 1974-1995 printings of the Laeralian 分50 note. The Vivier College of Education at Sun Jia-wei National Open University is named for her, as are six public schools in Laeral and eight private schools abroad offering Laeralian-style schooling.