Camille Laurin’s contribution to the protection of the French language is rightly highlighted, but few references are made to his contribution to adult education which, in my opinion, deserves to be remembered. It was he who, in 1980, when he was Minister of State for Cultural Development, created the Commission of Inquiry into the Vocational and Sociocultural Training of Adults, which I had the honor of chairing.
The decree which created it on January 23, 1980 stipulated that “it had become urgent that an effort be made to clarify the overall situation of adult education and to draw up a policy concerning vocational and socio-cultural training […] given that it is essential to carry out a global and precise elaboration of the objectives that can best serve the interests and the individual and collective needs of Quebecers”.
It should be remembered that at that time the funding of adult education was largely based on three-year agreements with all the provinces. In its report, the Commission recommended the transfer of these sums to the province, which would happen in 1997.
This link between basic training and continuing education is essential nowadays. In fact, once again, we recently highlighted the worrying rate of literacy among Quebec adults, a rate that does not reach the level three required to be able to take vocational training. As the population ages and the need to keep people in the labor market is stressed, it is important to put in place the measures that will allow this objective to be achieved.
A historical reminder
In 1918, Senator Raoul Dandurand, an ardent defender of improving the education of Quebecers, wrote: “The question of education should take precedence over all others in our thinking. It is on her that the future of our little people depends. Pursuing the goal of compulsory education, he faced fierce opposition from much of the clergy, who maintained that the power to decide whether children should be educated belonged to the father of the family.
The director of the technical schools at the time had convinced Raoul that despite the courses offered by the evening schools, the low school attendance, often limited to 6.7 years among 5 to 24 year olds, did not allow “to acquire the knowledge necessary to enter an apprenticeship, and [que] many of the young people who wanted to take evening school classes were discouraged and gave up on this improvement”.
It should be remembered that Quebec was, in 1943, the last province to adopt a law on compulsory education. This link between basic training and the ability to follow training offered to adults is still important today.
Let us recall here two important speeches by Camille Laurin which describe to us in a visionary way the depth of her thinking in matters of adult education.
He writes: “Adult education has done much to relativize the time and place of education. We no longer accept that there is a time for learning, which is youth, and a time for working and producing, which is the rest of life. We recognize that there is no third age or fourth age where we can no longer participate in learning, even that of the school type, and benefit from it. At the same time, adult education has relativized the place of education, for it has extended far beyond the university and the classroom the place where one can learn, whether nature, whether it’s factories, whether it’s a union office or a citizens’ committee. »
“I am thinking in part of the problems of administration, of prerequisites, of the fact that we have to take into account the achievements of whatever nature, even if they are not always of an academic nature. […]. We must take into account all the possible forms in which education can be given, which we have heard of and which are not solved by the present system. In this same speech, he announced the forthcoming creation of the Commission of Inquiry into the Vocational and Sociocultural Training of Adults.
The Commission, made up of experts in adult education, carried out a vast consultation in all regions of Quebec. It held 240 hearings, received 276 briefs, published numerous studies and filed a complete plan for the organization of training. His report, entitled Learning voluntary and responsible action, proposed an organizational model based on the democratization and development not of human capital, but of human potential. She even detailed the possible content of a framework law on adult education.
An always up-to-date report
Many of the report’s proposals are still up to date. The report highlighted, with the help of conclusive data, the aging of the population and the need to offer workers the possibility of training and retraining in all places of work and leisure. It called for the establishment of skills recognition services, the decompartmentalization of training and the participation of workers in the definition of their objectives. He invited companies to devote 1.5% of their payroll to training given the technological changes that were to come.
Efforts have been made to move in the direction of these recommendations, but too often, when we talk about keeping older workers in the labor market, or even about the need to train immigrants, we do not emphasize again with enough force the need to put in place the necessary measures that can allow this maintenance: good basic training, recognition of achievements, educational leave, investment of companies in training, well-trained and well-paid trainers, etc.
Like some of his predecessors, Camille Laurin understood the extent of the changes to be made in basic training and in continuing education. These changes were intended to enable citizens and businesses to cope with future changes in the labor market. Camille Laurin’s vision of adult education in a perspective of lifelong learning is still relevant and fits well with his defense of the French language.