Faced with the sometimes stressful, even paralyzing, algorithm of Parcoursup, Marie Rose Moro invites parents and teenagers to take off. “It is better to say to yourself “where will I be good?” rather than “where will I be good at?” »advises the child psychiatrist, who receives in her office, at the Maison de Solenn, in the 14e district of Paris. Since 2008, Marie Rose Moro has directed this structure specializing in the care of adolescents, attached to the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris. For someone who studied philosophy at the same time as medicine, it’s time to reintroduce dreams and freedom into an orientation process that has become largely rigid.
What is your view of this particular period of the time of registration of wishes on Parcoursup?
It is a difficult and worrying period, as if Parcoursup were a form of crystallization of all the worry and all the uncertainty that characterizes our world at the moment, to which adolescents are very sensitive. They talk about it a lot during the consultations, and the parents even more.
Parcoursup appears like a cleaver, with the idea that it will not allow them, but rather prevent them, from doing a lot of things. “And if we are wrong? What if we’re not strategic enough? What if we don’t have enough grades? » : they have the impression of being faced with a Russian roulette and do not know what sauce they are going to be eaten.
You have been following teenagers on a daily basis for more than thirty years. Have you observed a Parcoursup “before-after” effect?
Before, we said: “I am passing my baccalaureate and then we will see. » I am very sensitive to these moments of passage, to the initiation rituals, to the fact that we are happy to grow up, with something positive that marks this stage. It’s a pity that the baccalaureate has lost its value: it represented a very good collective moment, quite structuring for the teenagers. It was a whole generation of young high school graduates, who felt recognized as adults. We lost the collective in a lot of places. Even the “class group” disappears, since in the final year everyone is dispersed according to their specialties.
Whatever one thinks of it, the Parcoursup algorithm is a translation of the spirit of the times. It is not he who is responsible, but he corresponds to the way in which we conceive of orientation: more individualistic, leaving no room for experimentation. Maybe that’s also why teenagers see it as a threat: basically, it’s only based on what they’ve been able to do. It is not an age group that we make succeed, it is each individually with a set of hierarchies. Parcoursup remains a selection tool above all, it allows sorting in the sectors.
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