It is a long-awaited Minister of Education who appeared on Wednesday afternoon in front of the press, with a grandiose and solemn promise: to allow the students to return to class on January 17, and thus close another cycle of this deleterious virtual education. Although it seems to be hanging by a thread, as the scaffolding on which it rests is so fragile, this promise must be the other obsession of the Legault government – with health. Everything must be done so that it does not end up on the shore of wishful thinking.
Virtual education hurts the people of Quebec. For the first concerned, that is to say the pupils and the students, it is a monument of demotivation and a weak substitute for the learning carried out in the presence. Without an ingredient called “social interactions”, an essential engine for the development of young people, this ersatz school not only undermines success, but also considerably damages mental health. This other pandemic is brewing behind the scenes without being given the full statistical weight given to the damage caused by COVID-19.
For working parents, home education is a nightmare. These motivating parents certainly succeeded in igniting the hidden teacher in them during the first cycles of homeschooling, which was then almost a funny camping experience. But they no longer have in them an ounce of that motivation to keep a grueling duo at home: a virtual school calendar and their own job. When you consider that for the children of the first cycle of elementary school, 10.5 hours of virtual instruction per week is given, that makes a paltry two hours a day led by the teacher, everything else falling in the parent’s yard. already exhausted. This is an impossible mission, the price of which is high for all.
Quebec is therefore betting on a return to class on January 17, and this decision is the right one. But the Prime Minister and his Education team must remain intractable and stand up to Public Health if by chance this audience of experts who are sometimes too disconnected from the field once again whistles the fanfare of containment. Elsewhere in the world, where Omicron is also testing the limits of health networks, winning conditions have been met so that the school remains an untouchable bastion.
Everyone has long been identified as a screen for disaster in schools, rapid tests are undeniably one of the keys. In Wednesday’s promises ball, the education minister pledged to distribute 3.6 million rapid tests in schools as of January 17, and as many in February. We want to believe it. The availability of these tests is essential, as is a clear protocol – still awaited by Public Health – to isolate an infected child and a contact case from a class. France, for example, this week gave very concise instructions intended for parents of pupils: to return to class, a contact case must present a negative antigen or PCR test, then, two and four days later, a negative rapid test accompanied a certificate on the honor of the parents.
But Quebecers no longer have access to PCR tests and the race for self-tests is rarely a winning journey these days. While the Minister of Health predicts an explosion in hospitalizations over the next few days given Omicron’s crazy train – INESSS speaks of 3,000 cases within two weeks – Quebec is literally hanging on to a lack of resources in all the spheres of its management of the pandemic: glaring lack of human resources which leads it straight to a level 4 load shedding; lack of rapid tests and PCR tests.
Since March 2020, chaos and disorganization have unfortunately been the plight of parents, pupils and students too often. This week, while the closure of schools has been announced for a long time and the pandemic should no longer be the excuse to justify the lack of preparation, parents of students still did not know what to expect a few hours the beginning of virtual “classes”. The air quality in the classrooms continues to be a matter of concern, on which clarification is promised next week.
In the school network, the lack of staff was already a problem, which the pandemic has accentuated since 2020. There is no indication that teachers will be spared by the Omicron tornado. Minister Roberge is right to say that it is better to have a few absences here and there – he spoke of 2% absenteeism – and the return home of a few classes rather than an entire network confined to the house for longer. Its purpose, again, is most laudable. But doesn’t it minimize the impact of teacher absences? The rose-colored glasses have not guided the government well, which has been criticized for its inconsistency when it has had to reverse poorly planned decisions.