Surely you have already heard this (in my opinion) rather apt formula describing our school system. This one, she says, now operates at three speeds.
On the one hand, we have the subsidized private school: you will be entitled to fast speed, if you can afford it.
Otherwise, you have public school. It comes in two models and as many speeds. There is indeed a public school which, motivated among other things by the desire to react to competition from the subsidized private sector, multiplies the special programs, with the hope of making a good impression with parents attracted by the private sector. This is the second gear, the one by which we try to stay in the race.
Finally, there is the general public, without any particular program, which is the third gear, the slowest indeed. This is due to multiple reasons, including everything that the other two speeds deprive it of. But let’s not forget to take into account all those students who do not have access to the other two speeds and whom she must, and because she must, welcome and educate.
What to do in the face of all this? Following an impressive work on this serious question, the collective École ensemble puts forward a great and strong proposal.
What is offered
In a word, we would have, on a territory, on a common network, public schools AND so-called contracted private schools: these would not charge any tuition fees and would not select their students. They would be subsidized like public schools.
We would also have non-conventioned private schools. These will be able to continue to select their students and to request tuition fees: but they will no longer have any direct or indirect public funding.
Among the expected benefits of this common network are “balanced schools rich in their diversity, proximity that simplifies transport while connecting the school to neighborhood life, free education more important than ever in times of inflation and free special courses which will give all children a free choice of courses to improve life at school every day”.
What we can fear; and unfortunately foresee
Will this proposal bring about the major changes it advocates? I am not optimistic. And it’s not that I disagree with her.
Allow me to lay the cards on the table.
If things went as I wish, we would stop subsidizing private schools. Non-subsidized private schools could exist, but they would absolutely have to follow the Quebec School Training Program to the letter — and this obviously applies to private religious schools. All these private schools should therefore, like all other schools, be subject to the law on secularism. I also think that the particular programs that we should develop should first of all aim to help children and schools from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that it is therefore towards them that we should give priority to allocating resources, additional personnel and so on. after.
But here it is: none of these ideas is, nor will ever be, unanimously accepted. Not only are many people unfamiliar with what this is all about and the issues raised by it all, but each of my ideas takes positions that honest and informed people will disagree with. These positions relate in particular to the aims of the school, to the meaning in theory and in practice to be given to equal opportunities and social justice. They design, starting from there, ways of allocating resources which are by definition limited.
Faced with the proposal that has just been put forward, people, groups, researchers, media machines and public relations firms will set in motion. It’s already started. Many have legitimate objections, defend values and points of view which have the right to be expressed and which affect people. All have particular interests to assert, to defend. For the foreseeable future, no government, I fear and predict, will move forward (much) on this file. And in too many others in education.
A word from the poet Paul Valéry often comes to mind to describe what we have been doing in education for too long: we are “still with great strides”. Restless, teeming, but unable to really move and change things.
The solution, and I won’t insist since I have talked about it a lot, is a vast and serious collective reflection through which we will, we can hope, reach the broadest possible consensus from which it will become possible and legitimate to ‘to act.
A smile
I could not resist the urge to share with you this tasty and tender moment of school crossed on the canvas.
A primary school teacher has placed a box on her table at the front of the class in which she tells the children that she put the picture of her favorite pupil. Faintness…
You can go see who it is, insists the teacher.
A first child goes there and comes back smiling. So it was him, probably everyone thinks. Another goes to check: he too comes back smiling. Everyone will do the same, after having each contemplated… their own face in the mirror placed at the bottom of the box.