The world of education had high expectations of politicians during the recent election campaign. With the exception of a few promises made to attract votes, the issue of education has been one of the major absentees from political discourse.
Posted yesterday at 10:00 a.m.
In addition to the promise to build a school “if we are elected” or that of, “ pay the costs of the start of the school year… if we are elected”, it was necessary to delve into the various programs of the five suitors to find the reflection of a structuring orientation in education. Promising positions and resources was something surreal in the eyes of a Quebec screaming its shortage of manpower. It is clear that there is a gap between the urgent needs of schools and the promises made during the election campaign. However, no matter how much we turn the question around, we always come back to the same conclusion: Quebec schools need benevolence, vision and political courage.
Caring for people
Education in Quebec revolves around adults, present every morning in some 2,700 schools. These humans need air, stability, challenges commensurate with their skills. How do you welcome and integrate new people into their position? How to curb early professional discouragement that has been decried many times? How to recognize the inexperience of new people and offer them tasks commensurate with their stage of professional development? How to provide them with sufficient leeway to facilitate innovation, regardless of the position held?
The Quebec school is essentially human. Being concerned about working conditions and the climate in which they work will immediately put the new minister in tune with his or her network.
After all, isn’t the top priority of these people to seek out the best in each of the students and to make the school experience of our young people a pivotal moment in their lives? Showing kindness to school staff will certainly reflect on the quality of the school experience of our young and not so young students.
Defining the new mission of the Quebec school
The time has come to review the training program of the Quebec school. The current program is approaching 25 years of age. It was patched over the years under the influence of ideas of the day, political will, specific events and pressure from interest groups. It now looks like a quilt. It is also difficult to disentangle the responsibilities of the school and those of the parents.
But the world is changing. Quick. How can we believe in the timeliness of a training program born at the same time as the Internet? How do we learn and what should we learn in 2025 to stay in tune with a constantly changing world? Isn’t it time to remobilize around a common school mission, mutually negotiated and adopted?
Refocusing the mission of the Quebec school around the issues of our time, close to the communities in which this school lives, will have every chance of giving meaning to the education of Quebecers. Educating, socializing and qualifying will have had their backs wide over the past two decades. It is high time to open the dialogue and allow the emergence of a collective vision of the mission of the Quebec school.
End school segregation
We have read it many times that Quebec schools are unequal and the inequalities that run through them are accentuated by the effect of competition between the private and public sectors. In other words, the school system favors some students at the expense of other students. It is no longer allowed to turn a blind eye to social division and institutionalized inequality of opportunity. Correcting this social discrimination will require political courage placed at the service of the common good and inclusive living together.
Immobilism at this level would maintain the gap between our ways of doing school and the conclusions of research, which are clear on this subject: heterogeneity in a class does not in any way slow down students with ease and tends to increase the level of learning of students experiencing difficulties. If the school makes it possible to acquire new knowledge and develop skills, it also has a mission of socialization, understanding of the world in which we live and respectful inclusion of all.
In fact, the Quebec school must reflect our social values and allow our young and old to embrace and develop them. We will never be able to overcome social discrimination and school segregation by maintaining a three-speed Quebec school. It is an immense responsibility to make Quebec schools the future project of an egalitarian and inclusive society.
Regardless of the person to be appointed to the position of Minister of Education, Quebec public schools await with great appetite a benevolent, visionary and courageous political leadership.