On Thursday, April 27, on the airwaves, a union representative, the inevitable psychologist and specialist in academic success, Égide Royer, and, more unexpectedly, Ricardo Larrivee, took turns at the microphone of Patrick Masbourian, the first two to inform us of their respective position following the revelations about the tyrannical teacher of Sainte-Marthe-sur-le-Lac, the third, as spokesperson lit of an aspect of the famous LAB-École .
We will say many things and their opposite about the chilling episode which is probably repeated in other schools on a daily basis. But before going to cultivate my garden, as a retired teacher, practiced at various levels for almost forty years, I would like to reframe a little the debate which begins and dies out just as early, because, whatever says Mr. Legault, who had made four-year-old kindergarten one of his hobbyhorses, education is not a real concern of this government, any more than of the previous government for that matter.
First of all, let us state this: the educational act requires two actors, a teacher and a student. Point. It is therefore they that should be taken care of from the outset in order to reduce the problems of the first and second so that their interaction, in the majority of cases, takes place correctly.
Having taught for thirty years, from 1989 to 2019, in the same college establishment, after various experiences in the private and public sectors, I observed a more than worrying phenomenon that infiltrates many others: the systematic decline in the ability to attention of students. However, when attention cannot be fixed for more than a few minutes, the acquisition of skills or knowledge is jeopardized, because we only retain what we first paid attention to.
Besides ADD or ADHD, whose presence exploded during my last decade in class, there are all the others whose screens destroy the ability to fixate on something for more than a few minutes, even a few seconds.
If I weren’t afraid of losing my reader’s attention, I could immediately post here all the criticisms of those who stop reading me, associating myself with the destroyers of technology, necessarily old and grumpy… I have two tablets and fervently covets a third more efficient one; a computer, a so-called smart phone, even if subscriptions always cost the skin of the buttocks, and a TV of the same ilk on which I project the content of my phone, sometimes pirated. I forgot: two digital cameras.
The difference ? My brain, formed in the 1960s, is well “formatted” and, despite the annual loss of a few neurons, it still and always resists the invader quite easily.
How to take this phenomenon head-on and reverse it? I confess that I do not know. On the other hand, I observe it around me in children from various backgrounds, girls or boys, and this mortgages their school career from the first years. In any case, it is certain that the school takes in children who have already spent their first four or five years at home and in daycare, and that it would therefore be necessary to radically modify their living environment at a young age to have an impact real, but how many parents, themselves hanging on their phones night and day, will be ready to make a profound change? That’s another debate.
Education does not happen in a vacuum, and society enters our classrooms in many ways. On the side of the teachers, another building site should open, but the problems are far from simpler. If we exclude those who work at the university, the teachers, who are often female teachers, are poorly paid, see their workload increase constantly and must be silent under the pretext that they have a long period of summer vacation. .
Don’t get me wrong: I in no way excuse the actions of the Sainte-Marthe teacher! A brilliant little girl with golden hair, I have never been abused in class, on the contrary. More than half a century later, on the other hand, I still remember this Madame Goyer, in the first year, with her black hair and her piercing eyes, anything but benevolent, who clapped the hands of little Pierrot on the chalk board attached to the bottom of the green board when he failed to answer. This shows how the climate of a class can affect children and mark them even when they are not directly attacked…
The professional order called Égide Royer, with which I largely agree, is in my opinion only the culmination of a journey which should first of all be interested in the training of teachers. How many times have I had students say to me: “Madam, I already have two failures in French. It is imperative that I pass your course this time because I want to become a teacher! »
I always told my colleagues that I did not teach the theater of the absurd, reality was more than enough for me in the field. However, not only is the training not called into question, but we also want to shorten it because of the lack of candidates… Do we not see that we are thus opening the door to the phenomenon of massive abandonment? of those health care workers who came, lured by the promise of inflated pay and rapid training, but who were disillusioned once in the field?
The teacher often finds himself torn between the demands of the students, of the parents in the lower classes, of the administration and the requirements, even scaled down, of the programs. To have candidates, here as elsewhere, because the crisis in the world of education is not exclusive to our distinct society, it would be necessary to explain what this profession is and to revalorize it financially through remuneration that would reflect the number hours actually worked inside and outside the classroom.
To this should be added the increased presence of remedial teachers and psychologists, our complex society having a deleterious effect on children and adolescents. Quite a job, as I said…
I sometimes work on proofreading texts by a citizen of Laval who is working to preserve the green areas of western Laval. He encouraged me to publish my own opinion on this region where I have lived for sixty years, but I replied that my field of expertise remains education.
Not knowing if this text will be published, I have voluntarily minimized the stylistic effects and encouraged more substantive reflection. However, it is necessary to make noise to be heard, to propose new things, to have fun with the planting of gardens at school, for example, rather than initiating a real process of radical change. Knowing therefore that what is difficult henceforth has few echoes, I am going to return to my garden since there is a time and a place for everything and I am at that time of my life when the Candide’s advice takes on its full meaning…