Faced with the serious shortage of teachers and the increase in non-legally qualified people in elementary and secondary school classes in Quebec, I am greatly concerned about the new Culture and Quebec Citizenship course to be given for the 2023-2024 school year. in all schools. Having taught high school science for 26 years, I can say that teachers who have received a solid university education in one of the study programs will be of interest to their students. As I mention in my book Teach with passion (preface by Normand Baillargeon), the teacher must master his subject, he must be an expert in his field (p. 80). Indeed, how to convince the students, if the teacher barely knows more than them!
So, how will we manage to adequately train teachers who will have the delicate task of tackling complex subjects with young people such as sexual exploitation, consent, freedom of expression, recognition of the other, the development of critical thinking? In addition, the shortage of teachers also affects all subjects. Will the students have correctly acquired the general knowledge to approach and understand the challenges of the new course? This pandemic clearly shows us the lack of scientific culture of many people in our society. Comments read on social networks attest to this, when some people claim that vaccines are more dangerous than SARS-CoV-2, or when they claim to know more than infectious diseases, virologists. Freedom of expression should not be a pretext for saying anything. The same is true for the development of critical thinking.
Giving this course will certainly be fascinating, provided that the teachers have received a solid training, and not a few hours distributed here and there as is often the case in schools.
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