Simon Bucci-Wheaton became a public school primary school teacher overnight. He says in his book But why school? the difficulties of his profession and denounces the lamentable state of our education system which, according to him, must be completely overhauled. We met him in his class, where he teaches 1D year.
In September 2019, the director of the public school where his partner taught was urgently looking for a teacher. Thanks to his bachelor’s degree in cultural animation and research, Simon Bucci-Wheaton decided to take the leap into education. At 35, he found himself in front of a class of 6e year, made up of 24 students aged 11 and 12, “in a room that was too small where it smelled strange,” he wrote. He fell in love with the profession at first sight, but quickly realized the (too) many problems and (too) many shortcomings in the education system.
Simon Bucci-Wheaton then decided to come out of his reserve as a teacher, for the good of the children, he explains, and to write But why school? where he recounts with frankness and humor his daily life as a teacher in a public primary school in a disadvantaged neighborhood of Montreal. Everything goes wrong: the dilapidated premises where it is particularly too hot, the shortage of staff, the training of teachers which needs to be reviewed just like the programs, the painful bureaucracy, the lack of discipline and respect for the children and their academic results. not very shiny. In short, he believes that it is time to begin a major collective reflection on the education system, which must be reviewed, according to him, from top to bottom. An opinion shared by Normand Baillargeon, philosopher of education who signs the preface to the book.
“There really needs to be political will to launch the Parent 2.0 commission, more than 60 years after the first commission and 30 Ministers of Education later! It is for the good of all, for our future, that of our children and grandchildren, and it is also to better preserve the French language,” believes the man who is currently training at TÉLUQ University for a DESS in preschool and primary education.
Personalities from various backgrounds
According to him, everyone must be included in the discussion: parents, teachers, politicians, sociologists, researchers, academics, but also social workers, remedial teachers and artists, in particular. This is what he did, on a small scale, in his book, by inviting personalities from all walks of life to share their vision of education.
There is, for example, Ricardo Larrivee, who talks about children who arrive at school hungry, Professor Yoshua Bengio, who talks about school in the era of artificial intelligence, Claudia Larochelle, who conveys her love of literature, education professors Clermont Gauthier and Steve Bissonnette, who write about the necessary tools available to teachers to practice their profession.
I was very naive at the beginning, but as the days went by, the more I progressed, the more I rebelled against everything, because we lack rigor in everything in our schools. We need to review the program, why isn’t there a turnkey program with required readings?
Simon Bucci-Wheaton
“Also review the training of primary school teachers, which is too general. We need to deepen training in French, with more literature, more grammar, syntax, because we devote only 16% of the teaching training program to it even though this subject is so important and the level is falling,” he laments. -he.
Simon Bucci-Wheaton also believes that training is clearly insufficient to teach the social universe. “We teach the history and geography of the 3e at 6e year ? The two world wars? The Holocaust ? The October crisis? If we don’t have general knowledge, this training is not adequate… so we ask easy questions: in what year was the Second World War? 1939-45! Bingo! And the level of knowledge is dropping,” he says.
The burden of discipline
Simon Bucci-Wheaton also highlights the lack of respect students have for teachers. “I do discipline at least a quarter of my day, and during that time, we don’t learn to read or write, and that penalizes the whole class,” he laments. One of the most important things, according to him, is the role of parents. “It is decisive. It can reduce the burden on teachers and have a positive effect on academic results that would improve. There would be fewer teachers leaving the profession, because the teachers who resign are exhausted and frightened by the indiscipline of children. In addition, they inherit, when they start, the most difficult classes, because they have no seniority! »
“Have the parents thrown in the towel?” the professor asks. I know it’s difficult to be a parent, I have two children aged 9 and 10, but what I see is that parents refuse nothing from their children. Nothing at all. They can’t educate them. They go to bed too late, lack sleep, watch too many screens, don’t play outside enough, behave badly, I’ve seen students from 1D year start their office because they don’t want to do math. This is a real social problem and it concerns us all. »
But why school? Questions and thoughts from a teacher who wasn’t one
KO Éditions
224 pages