I am too young to have attended classical college, but I have heard of this institution since my childhood. My father, who came from a small, penniless agricultural background, had to make do, reluctantly, with nine years of schooling and admired men who, as he said, “had done their classics”. He saw in this a pledge of erudition and competence.
The memory of the classical course, however, remains strongly contrasted. In its vigorous letters to Father Baillargé (BQ, 2003), published in 1893, the writer Louis Fréchette paints a vitriolic portrait of the institution. According to him, these colleges do not teach young people to read, write and count, teach English and science very badly and feed the boarders horribly, in addition to supervising them and punishing them too severely.
So, who is right ? My father, with his idealized vision of a classic he couldn’t do, or Fréchette, with his regular exhaustion? Historical works on the subject do not really allow us to decide. Claude Galarneau, an expert on the subject, noted in 2001 that “those who have attended a college-seminary often say they are happy to have studied there and readily believe that it should have been kept”. The historian added, however, that this happy memory was accompanied by harsh criticism of the institution, which only educated about 5 to 6% of the student population.
In 2000, in The memory of the classic course (Éditions Logiques), Claude Corbo shed a fascinating light on the subject by studying a hundred testimonials from former students. In some cases, enthusiasm is there. Historian Marcel Trudel, writer Jacques Ferron and politician Georges-Émile Lapalme evoke luminous years.
The overall portrait, however, is more nuanced and even seems dominated by dark hues. If they emphasize the benefits of the discipline of life that reigned in the colleges and rejoice in the richness of the humanist training received, the elders, on the other hand, deplore the poor quality of the teaching of religion and philosophy, the incompetence of many teachers, abusive supervision and closure to the outside world.
In a review of Corbo’s work, the historian Nive Voisine noted, however, that after 1950, reforms had made it possible to correct some of the shortcomings pointed out and appealed to the testimony of students of that time to complete the portrait.
In The last of the real (GID, 2021, 186 pages), André M. Lépine answers the call. Graduate of the last classical course in the history of Quebec (1962-1970) at the Séminaire de Joliette, the one where Abbé Baillargé taught at the end of the 19and century, Lépine recounts the twilight of this institution. The testimony is precious, because it sheds light on a little-known reality, but it is unfortunately spoiled by a rough style with an often uncertain syntax and by a neglected editorial coating.
With Lépine, as with the other elders, contrast dominates. We do not really know, to read it, if he liked his experience or not. In conclusion, he engages in a defense of the classic course. It was, of course, necessary to democratize education as was done in the 1960s, but this should have been done by making “simple adjustments” to the classical course, writes Lépine, rather than by imposing a new system. “deficient, anaemic, anemic and useless” which qualifies many illiterates. Latin and Greek courses, adds the nostalgic ex-seminarian, “seriously lacking in the Quebec education system”.
In the preceding account, however, the moments of grace do not abound. If it evokes with emotion the pleasures of camaraderie, the passion for student sport and the discovery of quality cinema, thanks to what was the first course of its kind in the history of this institution, created on the initiative, between others, by Professor Claude R. Blouin, still active as a writer today, Lépine does not forget the darker side of his experience.
He remembers the “filthy, disgusting food” served in the refectory, the contempt of the priest-professors for the “sons of farmer like him, of the hierarchy of social classes erected into a system by the students — the sons of lawyers and doctors do not mix with the sons of workers or farmers —, of a teacher with wandering hands and numerous professors incompetent. At the end of the course, he thanks his masters and friends who “taught him to learn” at the Seminary, while emphasizing that, when he reached Philo 1, he did not often go to his classes.
So, the disappearance of the classic, a loss? A touching memory, perhaps, but it was finally time to move on.