The last few days remind us of the obvious: our education system is a system that wants to please itself first.
The Quebec school becomes a factory for masking failures. To act as if. To give a good conscience to a machine to the detriment of the students.
We are facing a slump in education, as a professor said recently.
Disguise
At the center of this slump is what teachers have been denouncing for a long time: the make-up of grades imposed on them. That is to say the fiddling with results so that the student goes to the next year even if he is not up to standard.
Yesterday, The newspaper noted a perfect illustration of the sleight of hand offered to us by our education system, under the very blessing of the ministry.
A “conversion” of the results for the ministerial examinations in mathematics was carried out last year. Too many “failure” cases; 55% was the new 60%. With the snap of a finger, because the students are less efficient and the standards of the past are no longer achieved.
No big deal if we level down. It doesn’t matter if we disguise failures as successes.
Why are we doing this? To show good success statistics. Do not repeat. Mass graduating. The important thing is the appearances, not the student.
To please the machine, in other words.
Mastery of French? Same dynamic. The ministerial French exam previously counted for 50% of the mark. In front of the failing factory, we lowered our standards and made the score count for 20%.
The result ? From primary to university, functional illiterates are “passed over” from level to level, always by devious means.
Teachers
This system doesn’t care about students.
But he also doesn’t care about teachers, who inherit increasingly dysfunctional, heavy and large classes. And we want to train more teachers?
What does the Fédération des centers de services scolaire offer in this context?
Increase the number of students per class. If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be funny.