Current events in education are troubling to say the least.
Here — who would have believed it only a few years ago? —, we are working on a bill (19) to regulate child labour. We may be surprised at first, but we quickly understand why we do it. This is because child labor is literally exploding, and with it occupational injuries and the immense risk of dropping out of school.
There, a few cases of verbal abuse and totally inappropriate behavior by teachers towards their students have put the creation of a professional order for teachers back on the agenda.
Further on, we discover that our teachers, who we already knew were abandoning the profession in alarming proportions, are at the end of their rope and that the rate of absenteeism due to illness, and in particular psychological ill-being, has reached peaks. The same goes for the support staff in our schools.
A sorry sight if there ever was one.
But let’s take each of these cases bearing in mind a goal that should be agreed upon: that of protecting children and ensuring that what we want to transmit to them through education is preserved and accessible to all.
Helping children… and education
In the first case, economic imperatives and the demands of the labor market take a disproportionate place in the solutions that are emerging, which are decidedly not up to what we collectively owe to the younger generations.
In particular, there is a world between young people who work a little and for pleasure and young people whose financial condition of their family forces them to provide an extra income. Failing to take this distinction into account is failing to protect children. And it also means failing to protect education and the goods irreducible to the economy that it allows individuals and the community to acquire, cherish and preserve. Note in this regard, as rightly pointed out by Égide Royer, that it is “totally incomprehensible that education is not a party to this bill. It doesn’t make sense.” In effect.
For the moment, we have a solution which is not without qualities, but which does not go to the heart of the problem because it gives an excessive place to the economy and does not grant education its rightful place. .
The proposal to create a professional order comes up periodically. I’ve always had reservations about this, but good arguments might change my mind. Especially the one that this order could better protect children.
Having said that, I cannot understand how it is, in the cases reported to us in the news, that we have not acted very quickly against the teachers at fault. Their inappropriate behavior was certainly known, their cries heard. Where were the colleagues? School principals? Is a professional order really what is needed to settle such cases? For the moment, in any case, the ministry does not wish to go down this path.
Would this professional order help solve the growing problems of desertion and absenteeism? He could undoubtedly help, but this time again, we are not going to the bottom of the problem.
To do this, it would be necessary to know exactly how many teachers quit their jobs — temporarily, for reasons of illness or permanently — and why they do so.
In this work, once again, it would be necessary to go to the bottom of things, and for that, with other measures no doubt, to look into the training received at the university by future teachers.
Is it true, or not, as some have maintained for years, that they are sometimes taught falsehoods, approaches or theories with little or no basis in credible research?
And that, on the other hand, techniques, such as those for class management, or pedagogical methods which are solidly supported by credible research, are too often misunderstood, even unknown, to teachers?
What impact can all this have on the difficulties encountered in their practice, which could have played a role in their decision to leave teaching?
If we were serious and wanted to get to the bottom of things, if we really wanted to protect children, protect what is most precious to education and value those who give it, we would get to work.
It’s urgent.