It is not common for Quebec and France, through the voice of their respective Minister of Education, to unite their efforts to defend the albums of Tintin and of lucky Luke, upholstery the To have to and the Figaro of their cry from the heart against the culture of cancellation. This is indeed what Jean-François Roberge and Jean-Michel Blanquer did on Friday, to fight together the “radicalization of positions” and the “culture of intolerance and erasure”.
They occupy the ideal seat for such a speech. The school, in fact, must remain the last bastion against the unhealthy and serious excesses of this political correctness applied in all directions, without discernment. It leads to frequent bursts of censorship, it banishes and condemns professors, authors, artists who are yet irreproachable.
Our columnist Normand Baillargeon related it last June, but this experience lived in February 2021 at the Toronto District School Board is staggering: in her French-language immersion course, a teacher put Jacques Prévert’s poem For you my love in the program. It is about slavery, but in the sublime, singing, respectful and human poetry of the author. An offended student immediately warns the media that racist content is on the program. The rest of the story continues on the theme of disenchantment: the teacher is suspended, and receives a disciplinary sanction.
The ministers are right to be offended and to call for the school to stand up, from the small school to the big one. The recent outcry over the auto-fire of some 30 4,716 books deemed discriminatory and racist at the Providence Catholic School Board in Ontario brought the two ministers and teachers closer together. “We affirm with force and conviction that school, an essential bulwark against ignorance and obscurantism, must be the privileged place for the construction of a common shared civic project. “
The government of François Legault is preparing to introduce into the school a new version of what could very much resemble a “civic project”. For months, the CAQ government has been considering the contours of a course that will replace the much-loved Ethics and Religious Culture (ECR) course. In his inaugural speech, Mr. Legault mentioned a course on Quebec culture and citizenship. Clumsy, Deputy Prime Minister Geneviève Guilbault added later by promising for this course a “little chauvinistic flavor: history, culture, Quebec pride”. Quebec pride, Mme Professor, what page is it on in my chapter?
It would be a shame for ECR to disappear without recognizing the slightest foundation. We can certainly understand that a government that has made secularism of the state one of its flagship projects feels embarrassed to have in its hands a course whose one of the bases was to teach religious diversity – not to proselytizing purposes, but rather to enrich general culture, open the minds of students to diversity and cultivate tolerance and critical thinking. If this course had not suffered from being launched a bit like a disaster, without proper training for teachers, it might not have been labeled as a catch-all, nor associated its teachers with an indoctrination squad. In 2012, the Supreme Court had also dismissed parents convinced that the ECR course impeded their right to freedom of conscience and religion for lack of … convincing proof, the judges having instead found that this course brought a better knowledge of diversity of the society.
Minister Jean-François Roberge did not shy away from the reflection surrounding the new version of the culture and citizenship course, which will be announced on Sunday. His consultations were indeed broad and stretched over time – thank you the pandemic. The eight themes submitted for consultation (sexuality education, legal education, eco-citizenship, development of oneself and interpersonal relationships, culture of societies, ethics, citizen participation and democracy, digital citizenship), however, herald a “diversified” program where the risk of tote announces itself. Faced with those who already criticize him for wanting to bring a form of Caquista-style propaganda into the classroom – another form of proselytism, what! -, the minister asks to avoid trials built on the absence of information. He’s not wrong.
In the past, courses that claimed to educate enlightened citizens often awkwardly mixed practical life with the formation of minds. Hopefully this alloy will be presented in such a way that it will be digestible for teachers. The conditions for the success of a new course include not only a very generous training component, but also the assurance of the availability of resources. Does the staff shortage already stand in the way of this future course?