On the course in Ethics and Religious Culture (ECR), I live in the same boat as Paul Journet (1). Let’s wait to see the new Culture and Quebec Citizenship course. The ECR course was in the sights of too many voices for too long to survive.
Moreover, there is nothing fundamentally “wrong” in wanting to devote a course that teaches Quebec to young Quebec citizens. Let them also be taught why nationalism has been useful for Quebec.
The devil – oops, religious metaphor – will be in the details. I say this without falling into the delirium of anti-religious, like Daniel Baril, of the Mouvement laïque québécois, who, on Monday, asserted that the ECR course was a vector of wokism (2). Only that…
For the crusaders of secularism – I did not say secularism – who see in the slightest hijab a sure sign of the sharia to come, the ECR course was a way to recruit Quebec students into multicultural hell. Personally, I am wary of those who think that school is brainwashing. They are taught the rules of French for 12 years and a critical mass still ends its 5e secondary school by writing “I went to school”…
I would like them to be less likely to write to sound, after 12 years of schooling, too: seems to me that that too is important for citizenship. But I digress.
I just want to note in the minutes that the government has been weighing very, very, very hard on the peaks of political marketing for a few days, around its most shaky minister, Jean-François Roberge. It is not innocent.
Minister Roberge, when he took office, was the bearer of immense hope: himself a former elementary teacher, education critic, now he was made minister. The least we can say, three years later, is that he has disappointed. Obviously, the education community is a minefield: it is rarely satisfied with its ministers. That is.
But the pandemic has shown a Minister Roberge in tow. On the class breakdown, he not only gave the impression that it was a peripheral concern, but he also misled the public by having Public Health say claims it had never made (3 ). It’s called a lie, if you want to stay on the critical thinking spectrum.
So, over the past week, Jean-François Roberge has benefited from two government actions that allow him to change perceptions of his person at a discount.
First, this course in Culture and Quebec citizenship: the minister publicly torpedoed a course that was not unanimous, which allows him subtly to pose as the keeper of the seals of Quebec identity.
Deuzio, this partnership of the Ministries of Education of Quebec and France to fight the “culture of cancellation”, a new front in the war against the scarecrow of Wokism.
I say here that the movements that aim to silence exist, I know that. But they have always existed. They can be worrying, I agree (4). In many cases described as “cancellation”, the institutions should have just discovered a backbone and said a word that exists both in France and in its former colony in North America: “No. ”
Jean-François Roberge and his French counterpart Jean-Michel Blanquer therefore signed a joint declaration (5) against the culture of cancellation last week.
I quote: “The banning of personalities, shows and conferences, harassment on social media, censorship, the subjugation of science to ideology, the erasure of history until the auto-da-fé of books constitute as many assaults on freedom of expression and civic sense, which take us back to the most obscurantist times of our Western societies… ”
Jean-François Roberge is particularly badly placed to sign a letter that contains the words Banning of personalities, shows and conferences […] constitutes as many assaults on freedom of expression and civic sense, which take us back to the most obscurantist times of our Western societies …
Two words, Minister: Daniel Weinstock.
Jean-François Roberge “canceled” the professor at McGill University, on the false basis of an entirely false column by Richard Martineau.
It was in February 2020. The columnist of the Journal of Montreal had then made say to the professor of philosophy that he was in favor of the “symbolic” excision of young girls.
Only problem: it was completely wrong (6).
Weinstock had mentioned in a conference the story of American doctors grappling with an ethical dilemma, a dilemma in which “symbolic” excision was taken into account. But the conference, in context, when listened to in good faith, left no doubt: Weinstock is against any form of excision of young girls.
In short, Martineau made Weinstock say the opposite of what he said, in addition labeling the professor as “disturbing”.
However, the very day of the publication of the column to be classified in the “fake news” register, the Ministry of Education canceled the presence of Daniel Weinstock in a conference on…
(Drum rolls, here!)
… Reform of the Ethics and Religious Culture course!
Everything is in everything, as Plato said, or maybe it was his cousin Sophism.
In this debate, Daniel Weinstock is not in symbiosis with the Quebec consensus on identity issues, whether it be on the place of reasonable accommodation, Law 21 or the real threat posed by religion in society, at the beginning. century. I would add: it is not in harmony with the Caquist vision of things on these issues.
What does the banishment of Daniel Weinstock represent by the ministry of Jean-François Roberge in February 2020?
I would say : The refusal to question one’s beliefs and certainties, to be confronted or even only exposed to opposing points of view, which testifies to a worrying retreat of the democratic spirit.
I put the words in the above paragraph in italics, because they are not mine: they are taken from the letter of the French and Quebec ministers of Education who are indignant at the culture of banishment. Minister Roberge signed this passage.
It’s, um, how to say, what’s the word …
Ah, yes, that’s it: ironic.
The “cancellers” are not all “wokes”, far from it.
1. Read the column by Paul Journet 2. Read the letter from Daniel Baril, from the Mouvement laïque québécois 3. Read “Public health or political health? 4. Read an article by The Atlantic
5. Read the open letter from ministers Roberge and Blanquer 6. Read “The lynching of prof Weinstock”, by Yves Boisvert