Like many, I read the letter from Pascale Bourgeois, this lecturer at the University of Quebec in Montreal who has a lot on her heart about the education system. It was not her very harsh remarks – she bluntly concluded that our education faculties have reached the point of graduating functionally illiterate people – that shocked me, quite the contrary! It is rather the outraged reactions to his radical, but legitimate, position that disconcert and even discourage me.
To hope for change, one of the first steps to consider is awareness. It is high time to take off our rose-colored glasses, dear fellow teachers, because things are not going well at all in the world of education. This is only a reflection of our society which is not doing much better. Still, one day we will have to face reality.
From the outset, can we agree that there is indeed a problem with rigor and discipline in our education system? It’s not just teachers who are in short supply, respect is too, which has a negative color on learning.
Everything is based around the needs of the child. It’s perfect, you say. No one can say it’s wrong to think about the child, indeed. On the other hand, we should not confuse the demands that the student dictates to those around him and those that are good for him, but which he rejects, because he does not yet understand their effectiveness or usefulness.
Listening to the child’s wishes does not mean letting him control his environment. Nor is it adapting this same environment by all possible means to prevent it from having to face adversity. It is here, in my opinion, that there has been a big drift in our network. We will have to find a happy medium, for the good of all.
Because it’s very true: children’s behavior is one of the factors that fuels the teaching shortage, which seems to extend to university.
To qualify myself to become a “real” teacher and to have attended certain faculties of education, it is difficult for me not to agree with what Mme Bourgeois affirms. Children who have attended primary or secondary schools in Quebec over the last twenty years and who now find themselves in CEGEP or university do not understand why it does not function like their little school.
Mom and Dad can no longer come and defend them in front of the mean teacher who makes them work too much. There are no longer special education technicians (TES) to come and calm a poorly expressed emotion that is detrimental to their personal progress. They now have to work hard to succeed, because they are no longer allowed to move on to the next level if they fail. Finally, they must do their work on topics ordered by the professor and not on topics that affect their personal interests and are focused on their particular skills.
Reality hits hard in the real world, here represented by the university. The student who resists will ask that the conditions of his learning be changed again to align them with his needs, and not the opposite. Can we blame him? It has been this way since kindergarten. From now on, this student will not be able to change the program according to his behavior or his expectations as he was able to do in elementary and secondary school.
A wise man named Boucar Diouf once wrote this: “if you do not accept that your child cries today, it is he who will make you cry tomorrow”. These wise words are from his father. It’s a metaphor, but you get the picture.
Educational advisors have already told me that I would not change my student who is disrupting the entire class. That it was me who was going to have to change the entire functioning of the class to satisfy him. However, the class worked very well for the rest of the group. Imagine the long-term effects of such advice.
Today, it seems very clear to me that the so-called more conservative method no longer has its place if we want to achieve a certain degree of humanism. But it also seems clear to me that what we have found over the last two decades inside our schools is not much better. We have lowered our standards to hide a certain mediocrity. Just ask long-time teachers to compare the evolution of standards over the years and you will fall off your chair.
No offense to some, it is true that the primary school teacher often has to put on the clothes of the summer camp facilitator. He must plan outings throughout the year and organize multiple holidays or special days, which includes endless committee meetings. Four years of university to learn how to fulfill this task? But why not use leisure technicians or cultural life facilitators? This would allow the teacher to refocus on what he was supposedly trained to do: teaching.
Isn’t there a happy medium between the old way and the new?
It is important to create connections with students. It is well documented that this has an undeniable positive effect on the student’s progress, but is it nevertheless obligatory to become best friend forever with them if it is to the detriment of his academic knowledge?
All things considered, I much prefer an iron fist in a velvet glove rather than a limp hand disguised as a Cuddly Bear.