We strongly support, for five reasons, the creation of a National Institute for Educational Excellence (INEE).
First, educational research is voluminous, of variable quality and mostly written in English. Quebec teachers already have a very heavy task. They don’t have the time to keep up to date on research advances, let alone the time to separate the wheat from the chaff in the forest of publications. The INEE will have competent staff who will sort, summarize the information and disseminate it throughout Quebec. Teachers will thus have access to up-to-date scientific information that will allow them to choose what is relevant for their classroom and incorporate it into their professional practice. INEE will not undermine their competence, but on the contrary will support and enhance it.
Our current system is not perfect, but it is enviable in many ways and the teachers at its heart are doing a phenomenal job. It is by explicitly acknowledging their contribution that a system like Finland’s has managed to stand out on the world stage.
Second, we fully agree with the Minister that a one-track system in education cannot succeed. The multiple speeds of our current system must be evaluated by the INEE, but they are initially functional in that they meet needs that are often very different from one child to another. These differences in children should not be extinguished, but valued and understood that there is no single path that leads to a harmonious and meaningful adult life. The child does not need to become an astronaut to be valued.
The excessive hierarchy of professions plagues our education system. It is at the very heart of our collective problems and generates deep anxiety among many parents.
Third, the all-too-common claim that our present system of education creates more inequality among our children than that of our Ontario neighbors is absolutely contradicted by the evidence. The multiple sources and thousands of observations that we have examined (sometimes until more thirsty) converge on a double result: 1. on average, young people in Quebec succeed as well, if not better, than those in other provinces; and 2. the students who experience the most difficulty do as well here as elsewhere and even better in certain areas. With INEE, we can better understand why, and go further.
Evaluate approaches
Fourth, over the years, Quebec has implemented major changes that have not always been tested with children. For example, the way of teaching grammar has been changed and made more complex without any research indicating that this new approach would be beneficial for children. INEE will be able to run experiments to see what works and what doesn’t before making large-scale changes.
In addition, teachers in Quebec are creative and deploy new approaches themselves, but these successes are rarely documented and shared across Quebec. INEE will be able to contribute to the advancement of our knowledge by evaluating different approaches with rigorous and diverse methods. And above all, he will be able to share the results with all teachers in an accessible and clear format, which university research institutes can do less easily.
Fifth, our value system damages our education system by increasing the pressure on children. They are too often categorized pejoratively in the public space.
Children with difficulties, we will always have them. But it is in the way we accompany and treat them that we can distinguish ourselves.
INEE should pay particular attention to anything that affects their well-being. Our work on nearly 800,000 children in Quebec (and not just on a few micro-samples) has shown that the diagnosis of attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity (ADHD) is currently imprecise and leads to medication using drugs whose don’t know the long term consequences. The diagnosis very often stems from pressure exerted by the school and medical circles in the face of the children’s behavior or their difficulties. The INEE will have to get involved in this issue by linking health and education data to get to the bottom of it and to see if it would not be possible to approach ADHD other than by massively drugging children. Norwegian researchers are already ahead of us in this direction.
Finally, beyond the issue of ADHD, we must recognize that the demands our children face in school are higher today than in the 1980s. Could we review the content taught to children, focus on the essentials (language, mathematics, science) and leave more room for creative activities to allow children to become children again?