2024-03-26 04:00:00
Schools closed or open, but with curtains drawn? Scientific culture activities or not?
The eclipse scheduled for April 8 plunges the Quebec education system into disconcerting confusion.
Nuanced “guidance”
Many wonder why Minister Bernard Drainville does not simply issue a simple and clear directive: schools must remain open and hold scientific culture activities.
This is what astronomer Pierre Chastenay and the general director of the Association for the Teaching of Science and Technology in Quebec proposed in a very pertinent manner – it must be said – on Monday in our pages. , Camille Turcotte.
Mr. Drainville also felt obliged to react to this letter as of Monday noon, by qualifying the “guidance” that he had sent to schools before the spring break when he increased the warnings for schools that would choose to remain open.
Faced with these numerous constraints, many opted to cancel activities. No! insisted the minister in his press release, we “should have specified” that those which are “external, supervised and secure” were “highly encouraged”.
Yaka
It’s not easy to be Minister of Education in our time. I have come to feel a certain pity for him.
Parents, unions, civil servants, columnists, all have a “there is only” (some in the French-speaking world write “yaka”) to suggest to solve a problem. The trouble: these YAKA are always contradictory.
Mr. Drainville “only had to” impose the opening of schools? Others would instantly criticize him for ignoring the autonomy of the School Service Centers (CSS); others to violate the educational freedom of teachers.
And let’s imagine the harsh reproaches if, the day after the eclipse, for whatever reason, we learned that certain children had been put in danger due to the lack of a teacher or supervisor. Oh and the CCS would have blamed who? The Minister. Surely there must be legal advice on this.
Obsession with risk
Some teachers told the CSS and the minister that they feared being taken to court by angry parents if a tragedy of this type ever occurred. Hence the precautions expressed in the ministerial “guidance” document.
“Precaution” is one of the key words of our “risk society”, a concept by German sociologist Ulrich Beck.
Since 1986 when he published his essay, the obsession with predicting the unpredictable and protecting oneself, through laws or insurance contracts, against the worst effects of incidents, accidents or unfortunate events, seems, more than ever, to be one of the features of the organization of our societies.
As Mr. Chastenay said, not caring about political correctness, this is turning into “hysteria”! And some decisions seem to have been “made by lawyers rather than educators!”
This is in fact how the risk society paralyzes and politics.
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