Initially, like you, I imagine, I found schools ridiculously reluctant to close their doors for the solar eclipse.
I enthusiastically participated in the collective tearing of shirts.
But as the “subject” evolved, as we “learned” more, we understood that the problem was not so much the schools as the contradictory instructions from the Ministry of Education.
We open, we close, we stay inside, we go outside, we put up the curtains, we change the consoles…
And I found myself having this thought: sometimes the State is tiring.
Necessary state
Do not be mistaken. I’m not yet a libertarian. Not a pirate yet.
The state is often necessary. It is sometimes given the bad reputation of being a straitjacket of inefficiency, which it is not full time.
The State is necessary to establish certain rules, certain constraints, and encourage certain behaviors. The State is also there to redistribute wealth. To educate and care, in the most equal way for all.
To encourage changes in certain climate-related behaviors. For the promotion of our culture, the protection of our language, to reduce discrimination and ensure gender equality.
A great example of the necessary State this week.
Recently, we have heard all kinds of stories where seniors were evicted in a brutal manner. In a self-respecting society, it is completely abnormal for a 68-year-old with a modest income to be kicked out of a home after having lived there for a few years. It’s cruel.
However, the market has no mood. He doesn’t care about cruelty. The State is therefore necessary to instill empathy and provide safeguards.
This is what QS tried to accomplish this week: expand the Françoise David law to strengthen the protection of senior tenants.
Tiring state
Now, sometimes the guardrails just go crazy.
When the Ministry of Education sends a memo to schools saying that “conditions must be put in place to ensure the safety of students and staff” in connection with the solar eclipse, it tires me.
When it wants to control and overprotect everything, the State becomes tiring.
As if the monks of the Ministry of Education had to plan everything, do everything.
We fear the prosecution of parents, they say.
But are we really going to avoid holding an event that could be an applied science course due to fear of prosecution? Should everything be canceled at the slightest risk that it may cause for the child?
I quote the astronomer Pierre Chastenay, in our pages: “These are decisions taken by lawyers rather than by educators!”
All the SOS cries
Colleague Antoine Robitaille associated this saga with our aversion to risk. He was talking about the risk society, where absolute caution reigns.
Imagine if you add the desire for minimal risk to a state that clumsily sticks its paws where it shouldn’t, you have the perfect recipe for total panic.
Speaking of panic, do you know where the information page on the solar eclipse is located on the Quebec government website?
In the “Emergency situations, disasters and natural risks” section. Everything is here.