If psychology education seems to me today one of the most essential disciplines to introduce from primary school onward, it would be naïve to imagine that such a reform could come about easily. The reasons are many, profound, often rooted in the very structure of our institutions and in the social forces that traverse our societies.
Changing an educational system is never simple: it is a massive edifice, where each discipline occupies a historical place, protected by its practitioners and defenders. But beyond this institutional inertia, other resistances arise: those of religious traditions, which thrive on our difficulties in bearing uncertainty; those of political gamesmanship, which profits too well from citizens’ psychological ignorance; and those of our own cognitive biases, which incline us to idealize the past and to fear any novelty.
Thus, while psychology education seems to me indispensable, it is also one of the most difficult reforms to envision. We must therefore examine lucidly the obstacles that hinder its implementation, in order to understand why it still does not occupy the core of our educational system, and why it will likely take many more decades before it does.
Institutional Resistance and Educational Conservatism
Reforming school is always an undertaking of extreme complexity. The educational institution, in France as elsewhere, is one of the most vast and deeply rooted of our societies. It mobilizes millions of pupils, hundreds of thousands of teachers, thousands of institutions, and traditions accumulated over decades. Introducing a new discipline into such a structure is not a matter of mere political will: it means touching an already saturated equilibrium, where every hour of teaching is disputed, defended, protected.
For school days cannot be extended indefinitely. Adding one subject necessarily means reducing another. And here arises resistance: each existing discipline has its defenders, its unions, its inspectors, its teachers, all of whom see with suspicion any encroachment on their hours. History, geography, languages, mathematics, natural sciences—all have acquired status, legitimacy, a place within school. To touch them is to clash with a powerful conservatism, nourished by habits, traditions, and professional interests.
To this is added a universal psychological bias: the tendency to believe that “things were better before.” Many, faced with an educational innovation, react with a kind of protective nostalgia: the school they knew, or believe they knew, seems sufficient, even superior. Yet this impression is itself a bias, linked to the way our memory reconstructs the past. We forget the gaps, the struggles, the difficulties, and we idealize a school that never truly existed as we imagine it. But this bias plays fully against any reform: it generates leagues of virtue, collectives of opponents, ready to defend tooth and nail the current balance, in the name of an imaginary golden age.
Thus even if psychology education were tomorrow to appear as a shared self-evidence, it would still meet with two joint obstacles: the inertia of a sprawling institutional system, and the resistance of social and memorial conservatism. Before even encountering religious or political opposition, it would already break against this silent wall.
The Opposition of Religions and Religiosity
Another obstacle, more subterranean yet equally powerful, lies in the role of religions in our societies. For if one grasps the psychological mechanisms that make our minds vulnerable to certainties and fictions, one immediately understands why religious institutions might look unfavorably upon the introduction of psychology education from the youngest age.
Religions thrive on two profound realities: our cognitive biases and our difficulty in enduring uncertainty. The religious promise, whatever its form, always responds to existential anguish by offering a simple certainty. Am I afraid of death? “Fear not, you will be resurrected, you will live in paradise, you will be reunited with your loved ones.” Do I wonder about the meaning of my life? “Follow this book, obey this dogma, and you will be saved.” In an instant, doubt disappears, replaced by a clear narrative, often reassuring, sometimes terrifying, but always effective in calming anxiety.
In this sense, religion can be understood as a structuring fiction, born of the human psyche, destined to soothe uncertainty by covering it with imaginary certainty. Religions are not discovered realities, but constructions. And yet these constructions exert immense power because they answer a universal psychological need.
But what if, from childhood, we taught everyone how their own brain works? If we explained that this tendency to seek certainties is above all a mechanism of psychic protection, not a transcendent revelation? If we showed that believing in a religious fiction, in a totalizing ideology, in a political dogma, often stems less from revealed truth than from a difficulty in bearing doubt?
Such an education would surely diminish religious grip. It would lead believers to ask themselves, in face of their own convictions: “Is this a truth, or simply a certainty I cling to in order to calm my anxiety?” And if this questioning became collective, it would weaken the strength of dogmas.
It is clear, then, why religious institutions would likely oppose it vigorously. They would rise up, denouncing an attempt to undermine traditional education and classical teaching. In truth, they would be defending less a truth than a psychological function: that of continuing to provide ready-made answers to human uncertainty.
Thus psychology education, far from neutral, would touch one of the invisible pillars of our societies. And we should not be surprised that it would encounter fierce resistance there as well.
The Interests of Political Gamesmanship and the Presence of Psychopaths Among Leaders
A third obstacle, perhaps the most insidious, comes from the political field itself. For if we admit, as I do, that psychopathic personalities are overrepresented among leaders, then it becomes clear that these same leaders have no interest in promoting an education that would enable the population to better recognize them and to be wary of them.
Recall: a psychopath, by definition, is indifferent to the suffering of others and feels neither remorse nor guilt for the harm they may cause. In ordinary life, this absence of empathy is destructive. But in political life, it becomes a formidable advantage. For governing means making decisions that necessarily cause some part of the population to suffer. Laying off workers, imposing a reform, cutting a budget, engaging in conflict: all of this generates pain. For a sensitive leader, such choices bring anxieties, scruples, sleepless nights. For a psychopath, on the contrary, they cost nothing. They can decide without trembling, govern without remorse, and continue their path without being slowed by the burden of compassion.
Add to this another characteristic: indifference to truth. For a conventional leader, lying is an ordeal: it produces unease, fear of exposure, a sense of fault. For a psychopath, it is nothing. A lie becomes just another tool, a rhetorical weapon fully available. And in the electoral game, where what matters is to seduce, to impress, to secure adhesion, this advantage is decisive.
This is why we so often find, at the summits of states and at the heads of major companies, personalities who display these traits. They succeed where others fail, precisely because their lack of scruples allows them to go further, faster, more brutally.
Why, then, would such leaders favor the introduction of psychology education? Why would they accept to train citizens to detect their strategies, to recognize their traits, to understand their manipulations? It would be to saw off the branch upon which they sit. It would be to reveal, to those who elect them or work for them, that their power does not spring from some superhumanity but from a deficiency: their incapacity to feel what others feel.
From this arises an even deeper structural resistance: the electoral system itself. For if psychology education became central, it might call into question the pertinence of a model where the most charismatic—often the most manipulative—rise to power. It might undermine the legitimacy of this electoral game that, by its nature, favors those least sensitive to truth and empathy.
We should not, then, be surprised that political leaders, even when not themselves psychopathic, are in no hurry to introduce such an education. It would threaten their interests, their image, and perhaps even the foundation of the system that sustains them.
I have chosen here to highlight three salient obstacles, which seem to me the most decisive: the inertia of institutions and educational conservatism; the opposition of religions, eager to preserve their hold; and the interests of political gamesmanship, which often favor personalities indifferent to truth and to others’ suffering. These three forces already suffice to explain why introducing psychology education from primary school seems today out of reach.
But it would be illusory to believe that these obstacles are limited to these alone. In reality, the difficulties are innumerable. Consider simply the question of teachers: who would deliver these courses? Such a reform would require training thousands of professionals, able to teach with rigor and pedagogy. Other obstacles would multiply: financial, administrative, cultural. Resistance would go far beyond what I have evoked here.
If I have limited myself to these three dimensions, it is because they seem to me the most structuring, those that, by their weight, condition all the others. But clearly the road would be long, strewn with obstacles.
Still, beyond the difficulties, I remain convinced that this evolution is inevitable. One day, our societies will understand that education cannot remain focused solely on the external world, that it must also teach us to understand ourselves. One day, psychology education will appear as an evidence, as natural as teaching reading or mathematics.
The path will be long. It will demand patience, perseverance, determination. But it is necessary. And because it is necessary, it will eventually impose itself. It is up to us, from today, to begin tracing its first steps.
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