On April 20, the great Guy Rocher celebrates his hundredth birthday. Let us take this opportunity to highlight his essential contribution to Quebec sociology and to the Quebec education system as a whole.
The biography of Guy Rocher written by Pierre Duchesne and published in two volumes by Québec America (2019, 2021) is eloquent to this effect, reminding us of the immense legacy of this intellectual. Rocher will have allowed us to understand that “the modern individual is no longer defined in relation to a god, but in relation to himself. The human becomes sacred and certain new human qualities become sacred: his freedom, his responsibility, creative activity. »
In terms of civic engagement, his involvement in the Catholic Student Youth (JEC) and his key role in the development of unionism at the University of Montreal testify to this desire to be at the heart of action and change. social. In his discipline, the student of Talcott Parsons also greatly contributed to the establishment of sociology at Laval University, then at the University of Montreal. Moreover, he is the author of an Introduction to general sociology which has become the reference work for several generations of sociologists in Quebec.
Rocher was also a politically engaged actor, contributing, through his major role within the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Education in the Province of Quebec (Parent Commission), to a real revolution – not always quiet – of our education system. Its contribution will have made it possible to modernize at high speed a system previously considered “fragmented, underfunded, underdeveloped, lacking coordination, undemocratic, elitist and sexist”.
For us who are four work colleagues from the college network, we found it necessary to recall the importance of Mr. Rocher, particularly in the creation of CEGEPs in 1967. Every opportunity he is given, he takes advantage of it. to defend the importance, originality and creativity at the heart of our network. You should have seen him at the opening of the conference of the Association québécoise de pédagogie collegiale (AQPC) held in Montreal in June 2017, standing throughout his speech, recounting his pride at having seen college teachers quickly take ownership of this network resulting from his work within the now famous Parent commission. This collegial network, the cornerstone of Quebec’s distinct society, which allows teachers from diverse backgrounds, as is the case for the four of us, to work in higher education in conditions of collegiality that many envy.
This particularity of the CEGEP network, this form of conviviality and openness, is not unrelated to the Parent commission’s desire to instill a decompartmentalization of disciplines and to promote conditions for interdisciplinary research. Many college teachers currently enjoy this enviable status of being at the same time teacher, researcher, pedagogue, front-line worker working on a daily basis with young people in full development, in search of both training professionalizing, but also of a general culture. Culture which, let us remember, was reserved not so long ago for a bourgeois elite, if not for a minority.
The demonstration of the relevance of this network no longer needs to be done, as evidenced by the great pride of the actors who have brought it to life for more than half a century, as well as the deep congruence that they demonstrate with regard to the purposes expressed in the Parent report. There are few political projects that come to fruition so quickly, that are brought to life with so many commitments and that last beyond decades, over an area that is known to be vast and diverse.
Beyond his exceptional career, his prestigious studies and his extraordinary contribution to the world of education in Quebec, Guy Rocher remains above all a simple and good man, accessible and unpretentious. A being who inspires confidence. A being whose quiet assurance echoes a generous science, put at the service of the common good. In our eyes, he remains the archetype of the wise sage, the far-sighted patriarch, the benevolent elder.
Unfortunately, the news is full of examples of a weakening of the network: greater openness to distance learning (pandemic, then new collective agreement), dilapidated infrastructure, lowering standards in terms of training and general culture. Returning to Rocher in these troubled times seems necessary to us. More than ever, like a beacon, it lights the way: the motivations behind the college network, that is to say this firm state commitment to make education a social project, should remind us of what must constitute the continuation in higher education.
The courage of our predecessors should allow us to stand on their shoulders. This is the only possibility for us to see further.