In the movie The great seductionthe inhabitants of a small village on the North Shore tried by all means to convince a doctor to settle there.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
If this film were made today, its star might be a…teacher.
The shortage of teachers never ends and Quebec must make new efforts to find, in the short term, thousands more.
The Minister of Education and that of Labour, Jean-François Roberge and Jean Boulet, recently announced new measures within the framework of “operation labor”.
The measures aim to recruit 8,000 people in five years in the education network, including more than 5,000 teachers.
They are all valid.
Improving the conditions of remuneration of retired teachers who agree to return to the network or offering more stable hours to substitutes are, for example, simple solutions which, without being magic, are useful.
But they cannot mask the basic problem that forces their adoption: the teaching profession is not yet valued enough.
And to change that, more complex, long-term work is needed.
Pure coincidence: the new measures to alleviate the teacher shortage are announced as Camil Bouchard revisits his famous report thirty years later: A Quebec crazy about its children.
These days we are broadcasting a documentary series, A Quebec always crazy about its children?which allows the psychologist to take stock of the challenges that have not yet been met.
And one of his findings is that Quebec is not “mad about its teachers” enough.
“We don’t recognize their importance,” he explained to us in an interview on Thursday. All of Quebec’s development depends on them. From very early childhood until very late. And there is no keen awareness of that in Quebec. »
There is an undeniable responsibility of the Quebec state in the fact that teachers are not valued enough. But it is a shared responsibility.
Responsibility for this problem rests with Quebec society as a whole.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
The psychologist Camil Bouchard, in 2019
Camil Bouchard, who entered the school in 1951, recalls that teachers were once seen as authority figures.
“The parents had a kind of anxiety or fear that we would displease our teacher. They wanted us to be obedient and polite to the teachers,” he says, noting that this went hand in hand with the religious, “submissive” environment that existed at the time.
Religion has taken over.
And we threw the baby out with the bathwater.
We’re not crazy enough about our teachers anymore.
We should however “venerate” them, thinks Camil Bouchard.
One can perhaps – cautiously – argue that the tipping point has been reached and the situation is changing.
In Quebec, the CAQ says it makes education a priority and has recognized the importance of promoting the profession.
The remuneration of teachers has just been substantially improved.
But within the teaching profession, grievances remain numerous (not to mention those related to the pandemic).
Salary is one thing, working conditions are another, teachers have always said.
It is true that progress remains to be made.
True, teachers have never had enough support to cope with the explosion in the number of students with learning difficulties in their classes.
It is also true that the reinforcement of the three-tier system (private, public and selective programs within the public) has only increased the problem.
All this has only confirmed the impression, among teachers, that their opinion is not taken into account and that they are considered as mere executors.
The list does not stop there, but this summary helps to understand what structures the problem of devalorization.
The contribution of retirees and other emergency measures is not negligible, while the shortage of teachers remains a concern. But the problem can only be resolved definitively if we manage to increase the value attributed to this profession.