For a generation, Quebec carried out the deconfessionalization of the school system. If we understood one thing yesterday, it is that religion is coming back into schools through the back door.
It is hard to believe what is contained in this investigation report on the Bedford school. Let’s get one thing straight: this report from ministry investigators is written in bureaucratic and cautious terms. Officially, we never talk about religion there. In fact, the entire report is about the takeover of a school by a religious movement.
First of all, congratulations to the Minister of Education for playing the transparency card by ordering this investigation and making the report public. The pressures must have been enormous to cover up such an affair.
Bravo to journalist Valérie Lebeuf who brought the sad secrets of the Bedford school to light.
The story concerns a group of Muslim teachers who formed a majority clan to largely take control of a school. They would impose their beliefs and their methods there. They would control the union and the governing board. All-round influence.
In Quebec, in 2024
The report is scathing: what employees and ex-employees of this school denounced is corroborated by investigators. The teaching is not correct and students are paying the price.
Here is a summary, in layman’s terms, of some of the “peculiarities” observed at the school in question:
· sciences are little taught;
· sex education is essentially not taught;
· boys and girls are treated differently;
· we refuse any form of educational assistance.
This last point is interesting. According to the conception of the teachers of the so-called “majority clan” in the Bedford school, the child in difficulty is lazy. Forget speech therapists for language problems or other specialists, these teachers don’t believe in it.
Reportedly, the fact that most of these specialists are women increases teachers’ belief that they should not enter the classroom. Believe it or not, that’s what’s happening. The door is barred, they are barred from entering the classroom. This is happening in Quebec today.
For a long time
The incredible thing is that these problems started almost 10 years ago. Many colleagues left, unable to live in this atmosphere. We burned school principals in series.
The School Service Center did nothing. The union, the Teachers’ Alliance, turns a blind eye since the local union representative is happy.
It took reporting and an investigation commissioned by the minister to begin to look at the situation head on. Three other schools are currently under review, indicating that what is happening at the Bedford school may be happening in other Montreal public schools.
School is supposed to unite communities, not be the home where cultural or religious ghettos will be created.