As recently recalled by several media around the world, children’s books, in particular Tintin and Lucky Luke, were burned and then buried in Ontario, Canada, in a “flame cleansing ceremony” because they conveyed a negative and mistaken image of Indigenous peoples.
For too long we have witnessed the abuses linked to the culture of cancellation (” cancel culture »), An ideology and methods directly imported from certain American university campuses and which are far removed from the values of respect and tolerance on which our democracies are based. The banning of personalities, shows and conferences, harassment on social media, censorship, the subjugation of science to ideology, the erasure of history up to the burning of books constitute as many assaults on freedom of expression and civic sense, which take us back to the most obscurantist times of our Western societies.
By its excesses and its excesses, this movement constitutes a fertile ground for all the extremes which threaten the cohesion of our societies. The refusal to question one’s beliefs and certainties, to be confronted or even only exposed to opposing points of view, testifies to a worrying retreat of the democratic spirit. Where does this growing unease about debates and dialogue come from, which are nevertheless at the heart of our citizens’ deliberations, and therefore of our democracy? What is the result of this loss of landmarks which leaves our fellow citizens in a state of vulnerability in the face of radical currents resulting from a deleterious activism and disconnected from our realities? This phenomenon strikes both France and Quebec.
Faced with this observation, it is more than ever necessary to reflect on the role of education in democracy. We have a duty to prepare our youth for the exercise of active, respectful and enlightened citizenship. A citizenship that leaves room for debate, the opinions of others, the confrontation of ideas and the questioning of all our beliefs.
Without a counterweight to the pernicious influence of the culture of intolerance and erasure, the democratic values - freedom of expression, equality, secularism – which unite us inevitably risk being weakened. The crumbling of the pact that unites the national community is at stake.
As Minister of National Education, Youth and Sports of France and Minister of Education of Quebec, we wish to guarantee young people a common base of knowledge, skills and principles based on universal values. We want to preserve this foundation on which our democratic societies are built.
This is why we affirm with force and conviction that the school, primordial bulwark against ignorance and obscurantism, must be the privileged place for the construction of a common shared civic project.
Quebec and France will organize a meeting of young people to debate these questions alongside intellectuals. We must at all costs fight against the radicalization of positions as well as against the culture of intolerance and erasure. We must continue to fight to defend democratic dialogue, as a form of peaceful civic conversation that cannot exist without freedom of opinion and expression.
It is not by giving up being who we are or by ignoring where we come from, as the “killers of memory” profess, that we will be able to celebrate progress and project ourselves into the future.