The chime that was ringing in my neighborhood from the school playground has faded. To mark the time of classes and that of recess, it is now the air of La Cucaracha who replaced him. Long before constituting an element of the musical folklore of sun destinations, this frenzied refrain, of Spanish origin, was used in the 19and century, by Mexican revolutionaries.
The songs had long, almost everywhere in the West, overtly political aims. We willingly transformed them, according to the needs of the moment, so that they could convey ideas. the Free us from the liberals, by Loco Locass, a song that could be reformulated, is in line with this past.
In Mexico, La Cucaracha was among the tunes that carried lyrics meant to encourage anti-French sentiments. It was at a time when the France of Napoleon III was offering itself Mexico as food. Of Maximilian, this puppet emperor set up in Mexico, history retains only the memory of his white shirt, riddled with bullet holes.
Before the kids and my neighborhood are subjected to the air of La Cucarachathe electronic chime of the school projected around, for years, the first notes of On the bridge of Avignon. For a Quebec school, that seemed very appropriate to me. Have you ever seen this bridge in Avignon? Thrown on the Rhone in the Middle Ages, it was destroyed several times, in whole or in part. Since the XVIIand century, what remains of it juts out into the waters, supported on just a few pillars. Anyone wishing to cross this river by taking the Avignon bridge would see their project fall through. To represent the state of the Quebec education system, On the Avignon bridge isn’t it perfect?
In Quebec, we have established, since the 1960s, a more accessible, more universal education system. However, the risks of seeing it fall into the water remain great. This system continues to falter on its foundations. The general state of school buildings bears witness to this fragility: everywhere, schools have been neglected for years. Is it any wonder that the teaching staff is up to it? The teachers, who are insufficient in number, are poorly paid. Besides, why still use the masculine to talk about it, knowing that these exploited are mostly women? Should we blame them for being insufficiently trained, stuffed as they are with theories of pedagogy rather than knowledge to transmit and culture to share? All of this, among other things, leads this system to poor results.
To correct the failures, there are now people who believe that it is enough to abolish the special regimes within the public school in the name of an abstract egalitarianism. At the Center de services scolaire des Chênes, in Drummondville, the classes to which the most advantaged students have access are disputed. They are singled out as if they were responsible for social inequalities. So short-sighted, does a part of the blackboard escape our gaze?
We have always continued to collectively support a network of private schools. The children of the bourgeoisie were first educated by private teachers, at home, before this collective system, adapted to their reproduction, was made accessible to them. Without embarrassment, this private network continues to make its butter with the cream. How to explain that this can continue without being reformed? The public network does not even have the appetite to take advantage of the structures of this old network when some of its elements give up the ghost. These rich private schools, however, leave behind places and traditions, some of which deserve to be shared.
I give two examples of opportunities missed by the public system to rise on the shoulders of a private system that it nevertheless financed. I could offer a hundred. In Stanstead, the beautiful Ursuline college has closed its doors. Despite the exceptional quality of the site and its deep roots in the history of the Eastern Townships, it has not been recovered for the benefit of the public schools located right next door. The children of the majority thus remained in soulless buildings, with crestfallen faces. The huge Ursulines gymnasium is now abandoned, like their elegant classrooms, their beautiful wooden staircases, as well as a pretty chapel that one imagines in a theater. A few kilometers away, another of the most important private schools in the region, Collège Massawippi, has also been abandoned without the benefit of the community. It had nevertheless financed it for decades. We have, in a multitude of cases like these, stupidly abandoned the tools inherited from our past when it comes time to plow the future. And what about all those private schools still in operation? Should the community subsidize them for eternity for the benefit of a minority?
Believing that society will fight for the best against inequalities the day it will have leveled the entire public school institution is a matter of superficial critical thinking. The school does not abolish inequalities. On the contrary, it renews them. Even if everyone went to the same school, with the same teachers, the distinctions of the various social groups would still be there, under the big tent of the consumer society. A child, depending on the cultural and economic capital he has at home, is not in a situation of equality simply because he has the same teachers and the same school as the others. To know a fairer school, we must first reform society. For the moment, it is less the school that is failing in its task than society itself, lulled by its political renunciations, by blaming all the faults on the school.