The Parti Québécois (PQ) fears to see more and more teachers conveying remarks of “contempt for the nation” in Quebec schools. He asks the Minister of Education to investigate to limit the scope of this phenomenon.
This week, the columnist Jean-François Lisée reported in the pages of the To have to the words of an Ethics and Religious Culture (ECR) teacher from the greater Montreal region who told her students that “Quebec is the least tolerant and least welcoming province in Canada”. We were able to consult the recording of this course, given in high school at the beginning of January.
“The host society in Quebec feels threatened. […] What do you do when you feel threatened? Well, you retort, you attack, ”she underlines, while brandishing the results of a survey conducted by the firm Léger, and according to which 59% of Quebecers were “strongly”, “moderately” or “weakly” racist. . However, this survey dates back to 2007.
“Overgeneralizations”
“Such remarks must be condemned for their inaccuracies and falsehoods”, indicated to the To have to the office of Education Minister Bernard Drainville on Friday. But, “troubled” and “shocked”, the PQ MP for Matane-Matapédia, Pascal Bérubé, urges the elected member of the Coalition avenir Québec to go further. It will be necessary to look into this particular case, punctuated by “abusive generalizations”, he maintains, then to make the necessary checks with the school service centers so that these notions do not become commonplace in the classes.
“We wouldn’t have known if it hadn’t been taped, but I suspect there are other people out there who make that kind of talk,” he said in an interview Friday.
“We would not accept offensive terms with regard to minorities or racialized communities. It is no better to make offensive generalizations with regard to the Quebec nation. This is not the place, a school,” he added.
ECR Course Review
Established in 2008 to replace moral and religious education courses, the ECR course will soon be of a new reform. The Quebec Culture and Citizenship course that will replace it next fall will teach ethical and religious notions, yes, but also “clarify several notions related to living together, including the concepts of diversity, secularism and racism, ”recalled Minister Drainville’s office on Friday, without specifying whether it will investigate the case denounced by the PQ.
Meanwhile, Pascal Bérubé invites the employer of the said teacher to seriously reconsider her place in a class. “We cannot accept that a single teacher can make such comments in a Quebec school,” argued the spokesperson for education for the third opposition group in the National Assembly.
“If the Minister of Higher Education has written to the rectors in the last few days to ask them to leave room for debate, in this case, I ask the Minister of Education […] let there be consequences,” he continued.
We cannot accept that a single teacher can make such comments in a Quebec school. If the Minister of Higher Education has written to the rectors in the last few days to ask them to leave room for debate, in this case, I ask the Minister of Education […] let there be consequences.
Isn’t leaving room for debate also allowing a teacher to express her positions in class? “Not there, because they are not adults. The teacher is in charge. These are words that are imposed on the students,” said Mr. Bérubé. The students are “captives”, forced to listen, he illustrated.
The Québec Culture and Citizenship course is currently the subject of pilot projects in certain Québec schools. The program will have to be approved by the minister before arriving in classes at the start of the 2023-2024 school year. The provisional program of the course at the secondary level indicates in particular that, “cohabiting in a common civic space, the members of the Quebec nation are no less diversified”, then that “diversity in Quebec evolves according to social and cultural changes that characterize each era.