With Boileau, the thought precedes the sentence: “What we conceive well is clearly stated / And the words to say it come easily. But to reach this state of grace, it is still necessary to have sufficient mastery of the language, which can only be acquired through practice. There is no magic formula: you have to write, write and write again. And read, read and read again.
It is gratifying to see Minister Drainville persist in his desire to get back to basics this week. Prioritizing the improvement of the quality of French among students is vital. Language proficiency is inextricably linked to academic success in all subjects. We have often denied the obvious: the fall of the first can cause the second to tumble. The Minister of Education forces us to open our eyes, with supporting figures: the success rate for the written exam in Secondary V was only 69% in 2022. There is danger in the remains .
The revision of the French programs at the elementary and secondary levels makes sense. It’s been more than twenty years since we dusted off the first, fifteen years since we touched up the second. Since then, digital technology has transformed our relationship to the world and to ideas. These programs must be linked to the realities of young people. The natural and sustained integration of works from here proceeds from the same spirit in addition to participating in the strengthening of our common culture damaged by the American steamroller. We applaud.
Admittedly, Mr. Drainville’s roadmap looks like deja vu for the education sector, which has seen several overhauls and pious wishes. Mobilizing the entire school team behind the learning of French, for example, is an unfinished idea that goes back decades. “Since 1980, it has been written that the quality of students’ French is the responsibility of the entire teaching body and this was never the case”, recalled last March in The duty French didactician Suzanne-G. Chartrand, in the wake of a devastating report on French in college, which suffers from similar ailments.
In this text, the specialist in teaching grammar and writing worried about our propensity to multiply committees even where evidence and knowledge have made their bed. In the report Better support the development of writing skills, the need to write often, and in all formats, was written in black on white. It was in 2008. The Quebec Association of French Teachers still makes it, in 2023, one of its main recommendations.
The addition of educational advisers in French and the adaptation of our lessons to the “technological” reality of the younger generations envisaged by Minister Drainville are also echoed in the conclusions of the Committee of experts on learning to write in 2008. There is no need to ask other experts to demonstrate this at length; Everything is here.
In their conclusion, these same experts also noted that the situation, already considered “deplorable” at the time, could not “be resolved in the short term”. Worse, they were convinced that their 22 structuring measures would only truly improve the situation if a permanent coordinating body was set up to ensure their implementation and follow-up. With the results that we know. Above all, the same series of errors should not be reproduced. Time, we don’t have any more.