As of Thursday, some 570,000 public sector workers were on strike. Never seen. Among them, our teachers, more than 65,000 of whom are affiliated with the FAE, are starting an indefinite strike.
I have explained at length in these pages what, in my opinion, is at stake here, which goes well beyond the certainly important salary question: nothing less than the preservation of our public education system, this precious treasure inherited from the Quiet Revolution and which has been allowed to deteriorate for too long already.
That day, I went to a picket line and I must say I came away rather optimistic. You guess: it’s not the government’s actions that comfort me. He who said he was making education his priority did not live up to this promise, and what I am told about what he is saying at the negotiating tables is not likely to reassure me.
But all the echoes I have of what the teachers are saying at this table make me think that they are well aware of what is happening at the moment.
And what I heard on the picket line also goes in this direction.
Degradation
Teachers and professionals are well placed to know how broken and why our education system is. Examples ?
One of the things that I have heard a lot about, is well known and that I have often mentioned, is the presence in ordinary classes of students in difficulty, but without all the support that their presence requires.
For example, I am told of the case of this teacher of 6e year which has a class made up of 23 students, 16 of whom (!) have an intervention plan. Worse: the teacher has very little help to do the right thing with these students: there is indeed a terrible shortage of professionals. Some have left their jobs due to exhaustion or are on sick leave.
Sometimes a student has a seizure. We must then, according to the ITCA protocol (therapeutic intervention during aggressive behavior), take everyone out of the class. But this means that we are not teaching.
Something else. Emails and other new means of correspondence make communications with parents more and more time-consuming. And if in the past a parent tended to agree with the teacher who reproached their child, today it is sometimes the opposite that happens. Dissatisfied (and sometimes for good reasons, it must be said), some parents send formal notices to the administration. Or send their child to the private sector.
The presence of many unqualified teachers brings an unexpected surplus of work to other teachers, who are asked to supervise these newcomers.
To all this, which contributes to this great burden of work, is added a strong feeling of loss of professional autonomy. Ultimately, some teachers go to the private sector, others take early retirement, others resign.
I would be remiss if I did not also report what many have told me and which keeps them in their positions: the love of their students, the feeling of sometimes having had an importance, the love of knowledge, without forgetting the happiness that its transmission provides.
The meaning of the current fight
Exactly.
Faced with what should sadden us all, teachers seem well aware that what is at stake does not only concern their salaries, their retirement plans, but also their working conditions and everything that can make the profession attractive. All this should contribute to putting an end to the desertions of teachers and professionals and, even more, given what their mission is to accomplish, allow education to play its role for our future, our future all, starting with that of our children.
One of my joys of the day was to hear the conclusion of one of the speeches given there. The speaker said: “We are fighting for our working conditions, but we are also fighting for the survival of our public education system. »
Right on that.
The essential support of the population
In my opinion, it is reasonable to think that the government is currently banking on the fact that the public, to whom the strike is causing and will inevitably cause harm, will gradually drop its support for the strikers.
In education, these harms are obvious: children no longer go to daycare or school, they have to be taken care of during the day, they accumulate delays which add to those, already serious, caused by the pandemic.
Let’s make the government lie. Let’s support our teachers. It is ultimately ourselves that we support in doing so. Because an educated society improves the living conditions of all.