You probably know: in 2018, the government launched a non-profit organization called Lab-École. Its three managers are the architect Pierre Thibault, the triathlete Pierre Lavoie and the chef Ricardo Larrivee.
They wanted us to exchange, and it was an offer that I couldn’t refuse. I was right: it was fascinating and educational.
An ambitious project
The mission of the Lab-École is to “rethink the physical environment of schools to promote success and contribute to the well-being of students”, and this, “around three main pillars”: the physical environment; agriculture and school feeding; a physically active lifestyle. Physical activity, building, diet: is it necessary to say to what extent the news continues to remind us how important these subjects are for school and that things are not going too well for each of them?
Six years later, in addition to some interesting publications, four schools have been completed (in Quebec, Saguenay, Maskinongé and Shefford) and two are about to be completed (in Rimouski and Gatineau). You will find information on each of them on the Lab-École website under the “Our Lab-École” tab.
Education, as we know, is a complex and often controversial subject. Often divergent, even opposing, visions of its nature and purposes coexist. Overall, innovating is not always easy.
On this level, I find that three things that the Lab-École has done deserve our attention. They concern the way we worked on this project.
Three valuable lessons
The first was to consult the people and groups concerned by what would be decided (teachers, children, parents, school and CSS directors, citizens, etc.), to involve them in the vast conversation that must be held, then in the implementation of what we have decided. To this end, we have also published booklets, files and web capsules.
The second thing is that, despite this concern for sharing, discussion and involvement of as many people as possible, there was no question of neglecting, or even worse denying, the place of expertise. Even if a good number of people were to demand that a certain food be served at school that food science knows to be harmful, or at least undesirable, we would oppose it, Ricardo in the lead. At the Lab-École, we therefore consulted and seriously took into account the expertise. We studied, read, discussed, we went to see what was being done here and elsewhere. And for the construction of schools, we launched competitions: here again, experts propose and experts decide, a bit like we do in research for peer review.
But could it be that what is put forward does not work despite everything, or not well, or at least not as we hoped?
The third important and inspiring thing that this project has put in place is an evaluation process by researchers, by experts and academics, intended precisely to make it possible to find out. This thing is rare enough to deserve to be highlighted.
So: is what we have proposed and implemented effective in promoting student success and contributing to their well-being? I can’t wait to read about it.
And the curriculum?
School is of course a place of socialization and learning the importance of physical activity and eating well is a well-known component of this socialization and preparation for adult life, just as it is desirable to live in a conducive and stimulating environment.
But school is also, and even above all, a place where we transmit knowledge deemed central through a curriculum that we have collectively agreed upon.
What the Lab-École puts in place can certainly promote the transmission of this curriculum and its learning by students. But, of course, he doesn’t define it.
What do the three Lab-École project managers say about this? What do they say about it after years of circulating in the industry, talking to so many of its actors?
With one voice, all three tell me that Quebec is ripe for a major collective reflection on education carried out on the model of what the Parent commission did here.
You can guess that I was happy about it.
But they also added something that is also worth thinking about, something they learned in the course of their work. There she is.
Certainly, this curriculum that the school must transmit is mutatis mutandis the same for everyone. But we should, we must also seriously and respectfully take into account the environment in which this transmission takes place. In this sense, to take one of their examples, we will not copy and paste the architecture of schools, which should not all look the same and which should therefore be built respecting the environment in which they exist.
Thank you, gentlemen, for sharing all of this with us.