We have learned that the Marguerite-Bourgeoys school service center (CSSMB) is abandoning its investigation into the criminal allegations concerning coaches at Saint-Laurent high school. Only the Ministry of Education will now investigate.
Posted at 11:00 a.m.
Several articles from The Press reported how the code of silence in effect in the education sector encouraged members of the school staff to ignore or keep silent about serious problems under the guise of institutional loyalty.
But we rarely wonder about the origin of this law of silence: how could the protection of the image of schools have taken on such an extent?
It is as if the schools were competing businesses that must maintain a positive brand image at all costs in order to attract future profitable customers and thus increase their market share!
Unfortunately, there is indeed a school market in Quebec: pseudo-private and pseudo-public schools compete with each other with marketing campaigns in the hope of selecting students who are financially and academically profitable. We will justify ourselves by invoking the right to choose parents, even if in fact, it is the schools that choose their clientele.
Explaining the state of permanent rivalry in which our schools are immersed helps to better understand school omerta.
Admittedly, the silence and complacency of school principals and service center managers are inexcusable, but they are largely explained by a strongly institutionalized desire not to harm the image of the school concerned. This desire is not specific to the CSSMB; it is widespread in the public network as well as in the private sector.
In a context of strong competition, the school community and its administrative apparatus have no interest in demonstrating transparency. The CSSMB is losing approximately 40% of its secondary school students to the subsidized private sector, despite a fairly positive overall academic performance.
Sports programs play an important role in building the image and identity of the school. Often presented as elements of student motivation and perseverance in studies, they are also essential components of the school’s marketing and are justified by their power (real or fictitious) to retain or attract students.
But the drift observed at the CSSMB forces us to rethink these programs in their specific institutional environment and in the real educational functions that should be used to justify them. We put pressure on student-athletes by asking them to perform in order to hang more and more banners on the walls of the school. Instead of serving the students, has the school come to use them?
In short, if the school actors are silent and do not intervene, it is because they have well integrated the rules of the school market, a system which puts the image and the classification in a prize list before the interest of the pupils. .
Much more than administrative solutions, it is this competitive regime that must be tackled, because it corrupts the raison d’être of schools and is toxic for students, teachers and administrators.