Bernard Drainville, the new Quebec Minister of Education, has just tabled his work plan for the next few years. Some people found it solid and many remained skeptical, saying at most that they were giving the runner a chance. Unfortunately, what I see is that far too many analysts have been fooled by the word “plan”!
In truth, unless you want to play on words, what the minister presented to us is not a plan, not even a roadmap. In fact, it’s more of a little shopping list of seven items — or, if you like, seven intentions — that would be supposed to get the education liner back on its feet, which, a little picture of titanicis sinking after hitting the iceberg of mediocrity too many times.
As I feared in a letter published in The duty last December, which had the title “Quebec is ripe for a major discussion on education”, the Minister fell into the bear trap of blinded pragmatism by limiting his mandate to tinkering and tinkering. Instead of wanting to work from a clear vision of education, a vision that he could have presented to us before taking a set of promising decisions, he decided instead, like all ministers of education who preceded him over the past twenty years, to work on the urgent, on the most pressing and also the most profitable politically speaking.
Of course we have to work on the quality of French, on the renovation of schools, on the recruitment of teachers and tutti quant… But how are we going to get there? No details, no long-term strategy, no vision for an education system that is melting away before our eyes.
Oh yes, there are these particular projects that the minister would like to offer to anyone who requests them in public schools, a proposal that he seems to have concocted — we are not fooled — so as not to have to talk about the elephant in the room. I am obviously referring to the file of the three-speed school, to this selection of the strongest students to which the private schools and certain public schools with specific programs devote themselves.
Studies on the subject are however clear: this mercantile and unfair approach is the cause of segregation in our education system, it perpetuates the cycle of poverty, reproduces inequalities and encourages social exclusion. In short, the three-speed school has plagued our education system for years. But that, the minister does not want to see it and even less to think it.
Anti-intellectualism
In fact, my greatest disappointment with Mr. Drainville’s press conference to present his seven intentions to us concerns the anti-intellectualism he has shown since his appointment. Everyone remembers his famous “Let go of me with the GHGs!” he said when a reporter asked him about the impacts of the third link.
It is a similar remark that he served to another journalist who asked him why he did not want to undertake a reflection on the subject of encrypted ballots: “I don’t have the taste”, he then replied, as whether this matter of prime importance was a matter of sentiment or mood of the moment.
The one who was nevertheless a journalist in another life does not seem absolutely open to the debate of ideas, to an in-depth reflection on the problems with which our education system is confronted. Unless you don’t follow the news, almost everyone has heard in recent weeks of the Let’s Talk Education initiative, this group of citizens who, faced with the inaction and lack of vision of our political decision-makers , have decided to mobilize by offering the population the opportunity to participate next spring in various forums dealing with crucial issues in education, in 18 cities in Quebec.
Faced with this incredible citizens’ initiative, what was the attitude of the Minister of Education? Radio silence, not even a pat on the back or a tip of the hat to the dozens of volunteers who are at the origin of this noble cause.
This attitude of the Minister towards all that is debate of ideas and long-term vision is sad, unworthy and very bad omen for the future, especially for that of the younger generations. In my humble opinion, Quebec deserves much better than this closed-mindedness!