Mesdames Boivin, Chabot and Debeurme, since it seems to me that you did not have the good fortune to adequately consult literature professors in the college network to draw up your report Mastering French in College: Time to Actrevealed to the public on March 10 by the Ministry of Higher Education, I naively thought that a public letter written for you by a simple CEGEP professor might allow you to read what, in my humble opinion you have done everything to refuse to hear.
In your laudable objective of finding solutions to improve the written language skills of college students, you are destroying the raison d’être of French courses, language of instruction and literature, which are an inherent part of general education, necessary for obtaining a diploma of college studies.
I seriously doubt the relevance of essentially emphasizing the learning of the linguistic code in college literature courses. What surprises me more on your part is the fact that you in no way defend the necessary contribution of literature to achieve this: this seems to me like an aberration that it is impossible for me to pass over in silence at the moment. current.
In these troubled times when the place of reading among young people is more threatened than ever, it appears that some of the recommendations that you submit to the ministry constitute nothing more or less than a letter of resignation from the educational project that our society is given from the Parent report. Rather than wanting to restore college French courses to their former glory, I conclude that you make it a point of honor to give them a purely utilitarian role, precisely by emphasizing mastery of the linguistic code in our course.
However, what about awakening to culture, art, identity, in short, to the various essential questions that can be raised by reading literary works? What about the necessary encounter with the characters of Molière, who resemble us so much, with the words of Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, who make us experience a reality otherwise unattainable? The literary experience, let us remember, is first of all an unprecedented and exhilarating incursion into the meanders of language. If, for college students, literary texts can sometimes be a demanding task, it is absolutely desirable!
From Maupassant to Voltaire, via Nelly Arcan, literary works are cathedrals made of words, sentences and chapters; we, the literature teachers, are the humble guides of these dizzying places that the students sometimes discover for the first time. You, on the other hand, are only suggesting that we return incessantly to what my brave colleagues from primary and secondary school have already taught them with all the patience in the world, from kindergarten to secondary five.
In short, by your narrow and exacerbated obsession with “success”, you annihilate the real educational ambition that we want for our college network. In this regard, I understand the appeal recently launched by the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec for the idea of “dusting off” general education; on the other hand, I cannot bring myself, following the example of your recommendations, ladies, to bury her alive. Literature must proudly remain the heart and soul of college French courses.