Obviously the pandemic has exposed all sorts of flaws in the organization of society. Take hospitals: they’ve been cracking up everywhere for 30 years for lack of organization, resources and consideration for employees…
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
COVID-19 has exposed the flaws in our hospitals, pushing them to the brink, forcing us to make immense sacrifices.
So, yes, the pandemic has exposed flaws. I don’t mind. But sometimes I find that the pandemic has its back as wide as the canvas of the Olympic Stadium.
Take the exit of a union of CEGEP teachers1, Monday. I quote the president of the Fédération de l’enseignement collégial (FEC-CSQ), Youri Blanchet: “We feel a decline in the quality of the student profession. »
Perverse effect of the pandemic, according to the union, CEGEP students would have a hard time studying, doing research, paying attention in class, taking notes…
Uh, allow a caveat as big as the moon: there’s nothing new in that.
For years now, teachers at all levels – from elementary school to university – have noticed that young Quebecers, for example, have difficulty writing and reading. The base, yes…
I’ve been writing occasionally about school for years, long before the pandemic. And I don’t know how many times I wrote2 on the phenomenon of note make-up3to make students “pass”4.
For a teacher to round up to 60% the mark of a student who had 55% in a subject the year her father committed suicide, that’s one thing. It belongs to the teacher, I have no problem with that…
But that school principals exert pressure on teachers to pass students so that it doesn’t look too crazy in the Excel file of the sc commission… – sorry, from the center-de-services- school – that’s something else. And it’s been around for years, and it still does, even though it’s officially banned.
It suits everyone, to disguise the notes.
First of all, it suits the school service centre. He won’t be bothered by the Quebec Ministry of Education, if his “success” rates are comparable to those of the neighboring school service centre.
Then, it suits the school principals: if the number of students who fail is reduced to a minimum with a maximum of lipstick, they will not be bothered by the school service center.
It also suits the teachers a bit – not all of them, there are some who fight – because by inflating the grades, they don’t get pissed off by increasingly quarrelsome parents…
This pressure to disguise grades is no secret in the education community. It gives an artificial portrait of academic “success”.
In reality, what does it give?
It gives a School that gives diplomas to functional illiterates. Young people who can read, but who cannot read anything too complicated.
And sometimes, they arrive at CEGEP. Why ? Because CEGEPs and universities are largely funded by admissions and if we only admitted students who can read, write and count well, well, I’ll give you a thousand: we would close half of the CEGEPs and universities in the province…
At the end of 2018, a teacher from the northern crown granted me an extraordinary interview5, where she showed how naked the king is, in our schools. I say the interview was “extraordinary,” not because Kathya Dufault explained how to make graduate undereducation sausage, but because she did it openly. His name, his face, in The Press.
She taught French in secondary two. She had shown me the list detailing the last level passed, in French, by some of her 30 students…
Some had not passed a French course since the sixth year, since the fifth year, since the fourth year…
And in one case: since the third year.
How did they pick themselves up in second secondary?
I explained it to you, above: it suits everyone to “pass” the majority of those who should not pass. It avoids hassles.
Well, one day, these students who fail, they “succeed” until the next level, until CEGEP. And if I do the math, the deficient students of second secondary of Mme Dufault in 2018, where are they in 2022? Yes, some are probably arriving at CEGEP these days…
High school graduates? Yes.
A little illiterate? Yes.
Three riddles, in closing.
First riddle – What is wrong with this sentence: “For each purchase make…”?
Answer: you have to write “done”, of course. Not “perform”. We learn that in third year. The base, tse.
Second riddle – Who wrote this sentence?
Answer: the principal of an elementary school in Montreal, on June 29, in a letter sent to parents. It wasn’t the only mistake. It was the grossest.
Third riddle – What happened to Kathya Dufault, after she explained to The Press the workings of the graduation of functional illiterates in our schools?
Answer: she was fired by the Seigneurie-des-Mille-Îles school board6. Among the reasons given by the school board, at the time: it would have “undermined the bond of trust of the parents towards the public school…”.
It’s not because we laugh that it’s funny, as the other said.