Believing that the education network is “really heading for a wall”, the director of a new documentary presenting an overview of schools in Quebec is sounding the alarm and calling on parents, teachers , other professionals, employers and decision makers to take action.
“There is no political will to really have an in-depth reflection on the education system. They just do patch the problems, without resolving the substance, launches Érik Cimon. The intention of the film is that it inspires people, teachers and other people in the field to do things differently and to demand it from the government. »
The director signs The school differently, a 52-minute documentary that will be broadcast on April 11 on Télé-Québec and available online. Politicians, teachers, trade unionists and experts are speaking out in particular on the three-tier school system which skims off students with so-called “regular” classes, special selective programs and private schools.
“It’s as if, today in 2023, we had returned to the situation of 1960”, underlined in front of the camera the sociologist Guy Rocher, returning to the Parent Commission which was set up in 1961 and which responded to problems of deep inequalities. “What we see today is a failure of what we wanted,” he said. I would even call it a betrayal of what we wanted. »
In 2016, the Superior Council of Education (CSE) ruled that Quebec schools were the most unequal in the country. A “gear of poverty” which worries Érik Cimon, who affirms that “more and more young people are slipping through the cracks” and denounces a diktat of grades, report cards and exams.
“We are in a system that values competition and individualism, he believes. The Parent Commission is 60 years old, it is time for another one. This helped Quebec emerge from an elitist education”. He pleads for a school with a decompartmentalization between the private and the public, with a better distribution of pupils who have learning or behavioral problems, many of whom find themselves in ordinary schools.
He says he had “all the trouble in the world” to find teachers who agreed to testify in front of the camera about their working conditions and the lack of resources for students. “They were all afraid of losing their jobs or going through hell in their workplace because they speak out,” he says.
Érik Cimon, 56, has bad memories of his time in primary school and then in secondary school, which he attended both public and private. “I didn’t feel like I was there to learn, I felt like they were stuffing our heads and trying to fit us into a mold,” he says.
The arrival of her child in elementary school was also a driving force in her thinking. “I hope that, in a few years, it will evolve at the educational level and in the buildings,” he says. No two humans learn in the same way, or at the same speed. We must undo the structure of the school system so that it is possible to have an atypical career. »
The documentary paints a dark portrait of the situation, but also aims to bring hope and a search for solutions. “The solutions have been known for a long time,” he says. “It’s a social issue of the utmost importance,” adds Érik Cimon. If we cannot eliminate social inequalities, if there are too many gaps, there will be a clash social as seen in other countries. »
The school differently will be broadcast on April 11 on Télé-Québec.