The last school Friday before the holiday break has always felt like an exciting ritual. Like in the cult film The war tuques when, in the early 1980s, young people in a Quebec primary school made plans in front of the infinite possibilities available to them, under the snowflakes. On the ritual side, we had to retake this year for thousands of students whose educational establishment is affiliated with the FAE. For their dedicated teachers too, who were forced to swap these festivities for picketing. We had to go back for the snow. On strike, too.
The teachers’ fight is not a playful affair of snowballs. The tension had been building for ages, so it was to be expected. They were abused. Yes, mostly women, especially in elementary school. We have taken them for granted, we have underestimated the value of their fundamental and increasingly demanding mission. Not to mention the pandemic which has left its mark. “The good little schoolteachers have had enough of being laughed at. Not so easily manipulated, ultimately, the little teachers…” quips my sister, who has just left primary school teaching after 20 years to bounce back elsewhere, where her skills are judged and fairly rewarded, finally. If you knew the stories she told me and which go beyond fiction, unrelated to her four-year bachelor’s studies in preschool and primary education… Stories proving that so many children, so many parents are not doing well . Radio silence in the face of his repeated calls for help. Sad for the hundreds of students who will never have the chance to benefit from his humanity and his great skills.
Now, a few hours before New Year’s Eve, which was supposed to be unifying and tinged with hope, I had the mandate to bring balm to the hearts of the readership. This is how it goes during the holiday season… While I look for the pink threads to cling to like one hopes for a truce in times of war, only the ordinary forces of existence come to my rescue, enlightened by 77-year-old Italian professor Carlo Ossola in The simple life, a brilliant philosophical essay published this year in Belles Lettres. Good nature, discretion, placidity, affability, dedication, loyalty, thoughtfulness, tact, gratitude, flexibility, gentleness are among the virtues advocated by Ossola and which should be used as a bulwark against the discontent of the times, for the re-establishment of ‘a salutary peace. In negotiations in the public sector in Quebec, to a lesser extent, as on a global scale against a backdrop of war.
On August 8, 1945, two days after the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Albert Camus wrote this in the newspaper Combat where he was editor-in-chief and columnist: “In the face of the terrifying prospects that open up to humanity, we see even better that peace is the only battle worth waging. It is no longer a prayer, but an order that must go from people to governments, the order to choose definitively between hell and reason. » I see it, yes, as an order that is so relevant even today. As I write these lines, the snow has started to fall again, an unfailing source of light to reflect the sun’s rays, reminding me that order, like reason, always ends up regaining its rights. The greatest gift this year would be to let the children win, to (re)put them at the center of everything, to think about their well-being, first, by meeting their needs. This will should be enough to make the best decisions, to restore peace, so sweet to their hearts, and to ours too.