I think it is urgent to name the heart of the problem of staff and student desertion in our public schools and to stay away at all costs from platitudes offering short-sighted miracle cures. It is not by raining more millions on the public education network that we will attract and retain teachers who are passionate about instruction and the transmission of knowledge.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
It is by noting that teaching is no longer possible in so-called ordinary classes as well as in more and more classes with special educational projects in our public schools that disillusioned students abandon teacher training prematurely, that a new teachers in four leave the profession before their fifth year of practice and that more and more experienced teachers are deserting prematurely before obtaining their full retirement. To solve the shortage problem, we must talk about education. We have to talk about everything that makes the ordinary class no longer allow teachers to do what they chose this profession for: to teach.
The composition of the class, the automatic promotion from one level to another without the achievements, the sacrosanct educational success at the lowest cost are the blind spots of the problem of shortage.
We must take advantage of every opportunity to bring it to light. The State, the Ministry of Education, has been diverting attention for years by directing the debate on the symptoms of the evil which are dropping out (renamed perseverance) and success. Thus, we never name the cancer itself: the public school no longer teaches. Automatic promotion without the necessary achievements, the race for junk success plagues the network of public schools. Students who manage to finish high school are graduates, but almost ignorant. They struggle to structure their thoughts, to write, to understand what they read, etc.
Mountain range
Too many teachers out of universities for 30 years, graduates of the training of masters, have not even been sufficiently equipped to understand that they have been dispossessed of their profession. Teaching, instructing, is no longer possible. This is the source of their distress. It’s heartbreaking, but at the turn of the 2000s, the Legault-Marois reform, by diverting the consensus of the general assembly of 1996, set up in our public schools a formidable and efficient assembly line which today gives all its fruits.
The network of private schools educates future professionals, while that of public schools trains, even formats, the workforce.
All this at a much lower cost than if we persisted in trying to truly educate as many people as possible. The only thing they hadn’t foreseen was that the teachers wouldn’t recognize themselves and, exhausted, disillusioned, disgusted, disgusted, would desert. The teachers no longer find themselves there, feel incompetent. Yet they do exactly what is expected of them.
In short, we need to talk about the act of teaching, instructing, transmitting knowledge and the importance for students in public schools to have the skills necessary to progress until they obtain a a real diploma which will certify that they have mastered the knowledge and have acquired the skills necessary to understand and act in society.
However, I understand that it is not easy to explain or understand. Worse, it doesn’t make very catchy headlines.