That’s it, here we are. We have seen this strike coming for months.
Many parents are overcome by a feeling of helplessness, but also of resignation, but fewer and fewer are fooled: the current government seems to want to pit the interests of public schools against those of the interests of the unions which defend their members. But it is clear that these largely meet the conditions necessary for public schools to function well.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light the ever-growing and ever-less-met needs, but since then, unfortunately, the current government seems to want to return to a normal that was already unacceptable. Too often, he attributes problems to the people who work in the system rather than even being willing to seriously debate the issues at the source of these problems that find their way into the media. Fortunately, the latter continue to be interested in education; very often, this becomes the only place for collective reflection and sharing in force.
This week, the Gordian knot we collectively find ourselves facing is twofold. On the one hand, strikes disrupt the already busy and often problematic daily lives of many families. On the other hand, parents note the chronic problems of public schools (overflowing classes, dilapidated buildings), the dedication of teachers and professionals which is not enough and which exhausts them (because of lack of resources and funding to support teachers in meeting the needs of students in difficulty, those of newcomers, in particular).
This prolongs many rounds of replacements because teachers leave, but also causes students to lack attention from teachers because they are doing “well enough”. To the dismay even of the teachers, very often. Indeed, these superhuman efforts that are required of them prevent them from doing what they have chosen to teach for: building a greater number of educational projects – educational approaches that can contribute to what the school “regular” public education is interesting, motivating and engaging for students.
For months and years, parents whose children attend Quebec public schools have been questioning themselves, encountering opaque processes, resorting to the media and contacting us to ask for help. These parents are the real hostages of this broken education system, but one that still functions thanks to the dedication of the school teams — teachers, professionals, principals, daycare services, support employees. Despite this, the crisis in public schools persists and worsens.
This is also why many families give up and turn to private schools, which seem to escape the permanent chaos that afflicts public schools. This leads to and accentuates school segregation based on income, at the same time that it also happens too often that families abandoned or poorly served by the chronic lack of resources in their public school end up tightening their belts and even impoverished by deciding to go to private school.
In any case, even if the child attends public school, this impoverishment occurs at the same time as students with special needs encounter impossible delays, and administrations — which are not ill-intentioned, but poorly equipped — suggest that they seek professional services in the private sector.
Insufficient investments
Governments over the past 20 years have downplayed and pushed forward the problems in the education system. The observations and fears that we were able to make in 2015 and which governed our founding continue and worsen, as we feared. We were already talking – and we have continued to talk since then – about a shortfall in funding for education and public schools, about shortages of teachers and professionals, seeing exhaustion and discovering emergency replacements. when our children finally told us about it. Not to mention the school infrastructure which has been the subject of chronic neglect for decades.
The recent investments made by the current government are substantial, but they are largely insufficient. We cannot make up for an investment gap in education (which we already estimated at $1 billion in 2015) by hoping that teaching conditions will be made up for by the dedication and creativity of school staff.
On top of that, the present government has carried out a shake-up of school structures which has proven to be quite ineffective (as we expected), which means that we find ourselves before Bill 23, which in our view establishes that Bill 40 ultimately resolved nothing. While the detailed study of this mammoth project (which still concentrates powers and devalues parental involvement, in particular) is being done under the carpet, this fall, without sufficiently capturing the attention of the Quebec population, we are seeing, it is adopted, always more arbitrary decisions, centralized as possible, more “information” rather than consultation and involvement of parents in relation to school structures.
We are now calling on parents to understand that through this crisis in public services, it is not only their financing that is in question, but the very conditions of their existence. The government must stop giving to the richest and telling families in general to tighten their belts by trying to solve their children’s problems on their own; he must stop using words that are intended to be reassuring and do what will reassure us and truly propel us towards lasting solutions. Finally, it must agree to finance one of the fundamental places for reducing social inequalities – public schools – which ensures us a more harmonious, stronger and creative society.
It is the future of our children, our students, as much as ours, collectively, that is at stake.