Faced with the shortage of teachers facing Quebec, the government reacted by approving more university programs leading to the teaching certificate. It’s good. It is a recognition of the value of initial teacher training. It is also an acknowledgment that for the young minds of the nation to elevate this teaching, their teachers must themselves be well equipped so that they continue to make us “something like a great people”.
What is less good is the fact that in the meantime, thousands of unqualified people are teaching our young people. It will be said that having a bad teacher is better than having no teacher at all. That’s true…but only most of the time. Because a bad teacher can also harm his learners. It can traumatize them and make them lose the taste for school — worse, it can make them lose the taste for learning and self-improvement. The solution to a temporary problem could thus cause permanent consequences.
So it’s all settled, right? UQAT and TELUQ will open their three new programs, more teachers will be trained, and the risk of trauma from bad teachers will be reduced to almost nothing. However, there is a catch. The problem is that the Ministry of Education gave its approval without waiting for the opinion of the Committee for the approval of teacher training programs (CAPFE). For the second time in a year.
What’s worse than allowing untrained teachers to plug the holes while trained teachers arrive? Take the risk that the programs that will train future teachers are themselves full of holes. This would anchor in the long term what would otherwise only have been spread over a few months, at worst over a few years. It would be to perpetuate an educational culture of the go-as-I-push-you.
What happened to Prime Minister François Legault who said he was going into politics for the cause of 4-year-old kindergartens? What happened to the Minister of Education, Jean-François Roberge, who, in his book What if we reinvented the school?, in 2016, inspired dreams with the audacity of its ideas? What happened to this duo of politicians who, having worked to unite for the future of Quebec, seemed to have understood that it was necessary to strengthen the foundations of the Quebec model—that is, beyond of its institutions, the minds of the humans who build them?
Compare this with what is happening in health. At the height of the covid pandemic, a massive influx of doctors would have been more than welcome in Quebec hospitals. For this reason, were the conditions for the practice of medicine relaxed? No, because we understand that an incompetent health services practitioner can do more harm than he can help; because we understand that, for a temporary shortage, it is not worth mortgaging the health of citizens in the long term. First, do no harm: basic medical ethical principle, on which we are not about to give up.
The nuisance of a bad doctor can manifest itself in seconds, minutes or hours; that of a bad teacher can take years to appear. Hence the greatest difficulty in conceiving it immediately. Yet it is well documented, not too far behind the psychological trauma caused by bad parents. Legislating against bad parenting is already done in extreme cases, but we must remain cautious. That said, it is safe to legislate against bad teaching. Not only can we, but we should.
How ? By the same mechanism as for all professions which seek to increase their respectability: by self-regulation. It is time for a professional order of teachers to see the light of day in Quebec. In his aforementioned essay, Mr. Roberge, based on his experience as a teacher and after a pan-Quebec tour of our education system, himself proposed this possible solution. It is occasionally discussed by educational practitioners and researchers. She can’t fix everything. It must be part of a set of measures to “reinvent the school”. But it remains essential.
Essential to avoid the excesses of a professional body whose training, both initial and ongoing, are the quilts we know. Essential to counterbalance union power in educational contexts, which sometimes defends its members to the detriment of the learners — who then become, rather than the targeted managers, victims of the inconsiderate protection of the most problematic cases. Health unions that have such effects on patients would quickly be discredited.
My country is not a country, it is school. But on this eve of the national holiday of Quebec, also commonly called Saint-Jean-Baptiste, reading this news makes me rather lower my flag. I therefore hope that in the event of a second term, the CAQ government will return to its original project, this time prioritizing the future, and not the past. Above all, I hope that he will give himself, to do this, the teachers of his ambitions.