The most recent report from the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) has raised legitimate concerns about the decline of French. Rightly, we thought that school is undoubtedly the ideal place to correct this situation, through the education and culture that we transmit there.
I agree. But obstacles arise and knowing them is the first and essential step to take to hope to overcome them.
Well-known obstacles. And others…
A first obstacle concerns the personnel we need to teach all these areas of culture that we immediately think of: the arts, music, theater, literature. We know: there is a shortage of teachers and this obstacle will not be easily overcome.
A second is that we do not always properly value these areas.
Another barrier is the resources needed to bring that culture to the school (through guests) or to bring students to it — what are called cultural outings. To overcome this obstacle, the necessary budgets will have to be allocated. This time again, it is not won.
But there is more. Because the culture that the school should transmit, if it takes its mission seriously, concerns – and we do not emphasize this enough – the entire curriculum.
Culture, here, is this set of benchmarks, knowledge, familiarities, words, ideas, which are shared and possessed in common by a people, by a population, and which is a major component of life- together. This culture is expressed throughout the school’s curriculum, in history of course, but everywhere else, from science to physical education.
Defining it precisely has never been easy and is even less so today. Several obstacles appear around the precise definition of the content of this culture. What exactly are we going to convey and how can we justify these choices?
Here, not without arguments, is the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu who warns against this culture which would be that of the dominant and which would favor those who, by their mere birth, are familiar with it. And which would exclude the others.
Here, always with arguments, historians are indignant at the place given to heroes today considered repugnant, at the absence of this or that event, at a “Western-centrism” spotted here and there, close to an identity-based nationalism, and so on. Look at the debates around the National History Museum on this subject and transpose them to school.
Here this time, with arguments which deserve attention, but which are hotly contested by others, are philosophers who insist that we give due place to what humanity has done best and more beautiful, all over the world: what they call high culture.
But here, and once again not without arguments, are defenders of popular culture worrying about the place that will be given to it. What ? We talk about Armand Frappier in science, but not Louis Cyr in physical education? And where are Félix Leclerc, Vigneault and others, in literature or in music?
Solutions
All this presents an immense challenge that can only be overcome by financial resources.
But I am convinced, with, among other things, what the Core Knowledge movement has done in the United States, that experts, intellectuals and scholars, honest and impartial, would reach a very broad consensus on this cultural content. and could even produce a Dictionary of Quebec cultural literacy modeled on that produced by Core Knowledge under the direction of ED Hirsch Jr.
Once this is done, these aspects of the curriculum should be implemented where they should be.
In my opinion (please note), this implies that it will be in a school where speaking French at all times goes without saying.
In a common, single-speed school, attended by all those who cannot attend English school, up to the age of 18. In a common school up to and including CEGEP. And in a common school where everything has been done so that these efforts to transmit a necessary cultural capital – a cultural capital that is even more necessary and useful if through our family environment or through immigration we have little access to it – do not are not undermined by the virtual world to which even the youngest have so easy access. Living together would be greatly improved and with it equality of opportunity and the vitality of our language and our present and future culture.
But of course these are just my opinions. To know if there is a broad consensus, in this issue as in so many others, it would be necessary to take the time to think collectively in order to act. This would of course be called a Parent 2.0 commission.
It could also be that to be able to do all this properly, we need a country…
To listen : HAS the school of Gilles Vigneaulta program in which the artist answers questions asked by students from the primary school that bears his name.