Letter to Bernard Drainville | The courage of Gerin-Lajoie

Dear Bernard,

You will allow me, dear former colleague of the National Assembly, to address you. Hard, hard week for you. But the balance sheet of a Minister of Education cannot be gauged from a language gap, even rebroadcast a thousand times. It’s embarrassing, but not fatal.

Let’s move on: our three-tier school system, the existence of which you have vehemently denied since your appointment. However, this system exists like a nose in the face, you know it as well and probably better than I do now that “your” ministry is giving you all the conclusive data to which you claim to be attached.

Three speeds:

• subsidized private schools that handpick their students and with a significant financial contribution from parents;
• public schools with special projects which select students according to their academic results;
• ordinary public schools, which must accept all children in their neighborhood without exception or discrimination.

We have lost for too long, dear Bernard, this noble objective of equity and excellence for all our children and young people in our school system. We systematically and insidiously send the message to students in the mainstream public sector, to their parents and to the staff of these schools that they are less fortunate, that they are less important, that excellence is for others. It’s embarrassing and, unlike a ministerial blunder or two, probably fatal for the country that you will have so wished to create, I remember.

How is this school segregation beneficial for Quebec? How does it contribute to our collective development, to the academic perseverance of our young people and to the professional perseverance of the teaching staff?

How does this segregation reinforce the social cohesion necessary for our well-being? Where are the data that allow you to repeat as long as you don’t adhere to this framework of analysis, this “ideology” or this “concept” to use your words?

A hot potato

I know it for having experienced it first hand, this question of school inequity is a hot potato politically. Parents want and seek what is best for their child. They are eyeing the side of private and selective schools, often discouraged by what they perceive of the public school relieved of its best students or those with fewer problems. It’s a vicious circle, you know that.

Breaking this circle requires a Minister of Education to recognize the problem and courageously attempt to change the situation. Gérin-Lajoie had plenty of them. It’s a great model to follow.

You would agree that you would find plenty of allies.

You could, for example, take inspiration from an ambitious plan for educational equity defended by the École ensemble association.

His solution: a common school network. I’ll sum it up for you:

• Private schools could be funded 100%, by consent. In exchange, they would give up selecting their students and would be free. This is the Finnish model. They retain their autonomy (like CPEs); the collective agreements as well as the seniority of the teachers are maintained.
• Private schools that do not want this status could continue to screen their customers and charge them fees, but without taxpayers’ money. This is the Ontario model, there reference in your party.
• In the common network, all students could choose particular projects without selection by grades and fees. I think I know that you also want to multiply special projects for everyone. Well done, but that obviously only makes sense if all particular projects are without selection.

Politically, it is the ideal passageway. Current private school parents who accept this agreement are offered that their children stay in the same school, with the same classmates, but that the fees drop to $0. Gradually, the school accepts free and without selection the children of the district in a school always managed as in the private sector. In the event of non-convention, the rates for children already enrolled in the school are protected; they are charged at 100% of the costs for new entrants. No tariff shock to the non-contracted private, free to the contracted private.

Dear Bernard, you have the power to develop a school system where proximity, free education, diversity and special projects become a standard of excellence accessible to all. You don’t govern by poll, faith of a politician, but all the same take a look at that of École ensemble: Quebecers want a common school network, a fair school network.

Looking forward to talking about it again,

Camil Bouchard