Shortly after his appointment as Minister of Education last October, I asked Bernard Drainville, in a letter to the Duty, if it would only be “a facade? Loud in mouth? Embodying both a fake revival in front of the population and a disconnected authority in front of people in the milieus? »
The observation is unequivocal, and it must be admitted that the attitude as much as the words are not reassuring for the future of education. Inconsistencies, condescension and denial of science obviously cannot make a good minister.
Bernard Drainville won’t succeed in education until he understands the distrust he can’t help but arouse. He condemns himself to leave behind only bitterness and cynicism among the teachers.
The insolence with which he rejected the three-speed school as well as he wanted to be let go with the GHG leads one to think that his interest in the next generations comes well after that for his own career. If he knew how many teachers, in return, sacrifice their daily lives for the future of the children entrusted to them, he would perhaps swallow his facade.
It is often said that Education is a difficult, unforgivable ministry. It is all the more so if its manager chooses to ignore reality in order to better impose his vision. Was it not the challenge of the last ministers to divert attention from the most serious issues facing Quebec schools? From infrastructure to success rates, through the shortage of services, it was constantly necessary to face the ministerial version to reveal the extent of the problems of the public network.
Never mind.
The three-tier system is precisely justified by the savings resulting from the underfunding of student infrastructure and services and the ruthless exploitation of an exhausted, bloodless teaching force, clearly not deserving of a worthy increase. this name. Beyond that, it is by neoliberal ideological dogmatism and the unacknowledged desire to reproduce inequalities. And finally, by the resignation of many parents, in these circumstances, to pay themselves a good part of the education of their child.
Bill 23 (PL23) therefore does not change anything about these impacts that, knowingly, we also choose to ignore. This is also why the management of the public network and the realistic measurement of its effectiveness will continue to disregard the variables — however conclusive — over which the teacher has no power, namely the composition of his groups and the level poverty of the families from which the children seated in front of him come.
Two criteria that will never worry the private network, and that skimming to the public is content to circumvent most of the time.
Until class composition and, by extension, the three-tier system is honestly recognized and challenged by the ruling party, short of making “regular” groups of 20 students in schools necessarily expanded (and renovated), the problem of education in Quebec will remain unsolved.
Notwithstanding the need to sort out and value—objectively—the best teaching practices, no one will ever succeed in making me believe that continuing education oriented according to the government’s vision, accelerated training and current employer offers will succeed in redressing the situation. This type of initiative only calls one thing into question again and again: the ability of teachers to deal with these groups, the complexity of which has worsened for more than ten years without anything really being done to remedy it. .
And let me be clear: the students who were supposed to succeed should still and always succeed. But if we remove almost all of them from the groups where, on the other hand, we practice the inclusion at all costs of the most diverse disorders – learning and behavioral – then not only are we condemning the students who perhaps had a chance , but we also condemn the teacher who will nevertheless have fought with his last resources, his last energies, risking his own physical and mental health.
Thus, the government is not only responsible for the teachers it sends into battle, it is also responsible for the very nature of the battlefield.
Whatever Minister Drainville says to justify his bill, the effort clearly aims to appropriate the sciences of education through skilful rhetoric in order to legitimize a political vision that remains deeply discriminatory and irresponsible.
Strategically, it is a question of sowing—once again—doubt about the skills of teachers by insinuating that certain evidence, including the famous teacher effect, if applied properly, would compensate for what, at bottom, is turn out to be the perverse effects of an elitist system that is less sincerely denied than valued.
This is why, through all the noise linked to the PL23, we must never forget that the Minister of Education will always – fundamentally – have the mandate to defend the indefensible: the maintenance, at all costs, of the education system most unfair and unequal in the country.
It hardly consoles me that he does it so badly.