Independence is the word that returns annually to our memories as we pass through the month of June. The term has long been trivialized and, even in people's minds, it no longer carries the weight that this treasure should have—the treasure that animated the will of those who fought to obtain it. It no longer has the same force it held a hundred years ago in the consciousness of those who have lived only within this independence. It is in this context, as the word has been reduced to such lightness, that there arises once again, facing the weight of these years of independence marked by unconsciousness, lack of civic responsibility, and precarity, the question that has been asked many times across the African continent: "What have we done with our independences?" For sixty-six years, our history followed a downward path that scraped away at our mentalities, reduced to a state as alarming as the material situation of the country. We live in an era where the flag flutters, agitated by the wind of misery, whose sharpness spares not even the intellectual domain, which has suffered the same decline since that era initiated on June 26, 1960. Independence seems to be a mirage that dazzles us only when the brilliance of celebration is at its peak. During these moments, the artificial gilding of the festivities covers all the ills accumulated over these years of "independence." Sixty-six years of enduring the torment of Tantalus before the riches we know lie buried in our soil, yet which continue to escape us. Sixty-six years also of living the punishment of Sisyphus, with a history marked by crises that force us to constantly restart the ascent of the rock of development, from which we cannot avoid the fall. An unproductive back-and-forth that has bred weariness in some and despair in others. For still others, this harmful cycle rings more heavily the bell that has long announced the loss of the fundamental values necessary for an independence placed under the sign of progress. Since that day of the "return of independence," "The Suns of Independence," to borrow from novelist Ahmadou Kourouma, have offered us ambiguous lights. The light of hope has shone, but different heats have also left orphans among the "children of the Republic." Sixty-six years later, education is still scorched by these toxic rays that dry up civic responsibility and learning. More than ever, the Republic needs us to awaken another sun that has also continued to decline: that of school and the consciousness of the common good.