Mr. Drainville has just announced important measures, some of which many of us have longed for for years, but which others have radically condemned and feared for a long time. Opposed here, among others, on the one hand, are intellectuals, rare academics and people in the field (in particular school or CSS directors); on the other, academics in education, intellectuals and part of the trade unions. The cleavage is huge between the positions of some and those of others, and it took courage to do what the minister has just done.
The fact remains that, if what has been announced yields the expected results, we are at the dawn of a revolution in education.
And she won’t be quiet.
What we announce
The announced changes are immense. Here are a few, without going into details.
It is now on the recommendation of the minister to the government that we will appoint the directors general of the school service centers (CSS), and they will have to report according to an annual agreement specifying the expectations — as is done in health . The CSS will have to make available and disseminate the data necessary for informed decision-making.
The Committee for Accreditation of Teacher Training Programs (CAPFE), which approved training programs to become a teacher, was abolished and a National Institute of Excellence in Education (INEE) was created. This will make recommendations on the skills that teachers should have at each school level. It will also disseminate knowledge on best practices in education and advise the Minister and the community on all of this. Its mission marks the end of the Higher Education Council as we know it: from now on, it will only deal with higher education.
Finally, we intend to provide a better framework for the continuing education of teachers and make it more solid and more relevant.
All of this is huge and it is shaking up the environment, habits, practices and many actors and institutions, including the university community.
In my opinion, however, and even if there is still a long way to go — in particular to apply the Act respecting the secularism of the State in all schools, including religious ones, and to stop subsidizing private schools — we are here in a re-establishment of the ideals of the Quiet Revolution, from which we had unfortunately been very far removed.
What’s at stake
I find this paradigm shift that seems to be beginning to be particularly important and reassuring. Finally, we recognize that too often we have little or none of the valid and reliable descriptive data that we still need to make good decisions.
We also recognize — finally! — that we do not always act taking into account what the best evidence teaches us. These data, in fact, are not sufficiently known, disseminated and taught, and it even happens that falsehoods are disseminated, pedagogical legends, including at university, and that these legends are, and in fact sometimes are, detrimental to effective practice. INEE should help correct this terrible situation.
However, conditions will have to be met for this ambitious paradigm shift to be properly accomplished. Here are a few.
What we should wish
For starters, there needs to be credible people appointed to the INEE, people well versed in the evidence and sheltered from all those ideological chapels that have done so much damage to education here.
Then, it is absolutely necessary to ensure the independence of the INEE in relation to politics and the maintenance of the professional autonomy of teachers.
It is also necessary that this call for evidence be lucid and measured, that we recognize its limits and admit that they do not all have the same value, the same credibility, and even that they are, in law at least , always revisable.
We must also look, with the utmost seriousness, to find out whether what we have recommended has worked as planned. For this, rational management based on results is a necessary complement to any appeal to conclusive data. This applies on a daily basis to the teacher, the remedial teacher, the director, the school service center, the ministry, all of whom are responsible for professionally measuring the effects of their actions on the children, on an ongoing basis.
Finally, we must above all, above all not forget that if evidence can enlighten us on the means to be implemented to achieve ends, it cannot dictate these ends to us. Here, the place of the philosophy of education is, along with other areas of knowledge (sociology, politics), essential for collectively making the necessary choices.
A revolution is underway. She will not be quiet. But it must take place. Education is too important an institution and things are too bad not to act. And this must be done on the basis of the most plausible knowledge and a clear idea of the ends we are aiming for.
We owe it to all of us, collectively. We owe it to the children. We owe it to this ideal of democracy that must be nurtured, in particular by the transmission to all of knowledge recognized as essential: which is precisely what education must do.
Doctor of philosophy, doctor of education and columnist, Normand Baillargeon has written, directed or translated and edited more than seventy books.