2023-10-16 10:08:49
In Michel Stringer’s class, there are shelves with books. Literary classics and other works address today’s social issues. His Secondary 4 students turn their backs on the electronic board. This French teacher prefers to write with chalk on a green board.
In his enriched program groups, Michel Stringer still does what he did before with his students in the regular sector, that is to say, he imposes some readings and gives them the choice of other works according to their interests.
The only requirement from the Quebec Ministry of Education is to have high school students read at least five literary works per year. The MEES gives teachers the prerogative to choose the works to have young people read.
Should we impose the same compulsory readings on all secondary school students or not? The debate regularly resurfaces between supporters of the classics of literature and those who want to give each teacher carte blanche. The fact that the program is about to be modified in anticipation of fall 2025 brings to the forefront the whole question of teacher autonomy and the need or not for ministerial directives.
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The first novel that Dany Laferrière read no longer had a cover. “For a long time, I didn’t know who I was reading,” he says.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Anne-Louise Despatie
Far from wanting to interfere in the revision of the Quebec educational program, the author and member of the French Academy Dany Laferrière says that the best way to ignite the spark, to get young people to read, is to forbid them reading! A joke, yes, but perhaps more so in an era where distractions are numerous.
As for these works that are considered classics, Dany Laferrière believes that they must be connected to the present of young Quebec readers.
We must bring the classic into everyday life. […] It is only the present time that matters to humans. If you tell them that Villon is a rapper, which he really is, in his way of writing, of saying, of speaking… If you want them to read Rabelais, you have to bring Rabelais in today ‘today.
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Students absorbed in their reading.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Anne-Louise Despatie
This is what teacher Michel Stringer seeks by offering works by Balzac or Baudelaire to his students, who find very current concerns there. Even though they knew nothing about the housing crisis in Montreal today, these authors described poverty in Paris and social inequalities.
Vice-president of the Quebec Association of French Teachers and teacher at Collège Charles-Lemoyne, Alexandra Pharand believes that all teachers want to transmit a taste for reading to their students. If this is the starting point, she also knows that it is also necessary to find a balance between what interests adolescents and what must be taught in the program while transmitting to them a literary culture.
My list includes not only The three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas but also Wildlife Handbook by Jean-Philippe Baril-Guérard, who talks about a subject that resonates with my students, artificial intelligence, and which is written in a rich language.
Alexandra Pharand believes that the current framework allows her to make the appropriate choices for her students. No need for strict guidelines.
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Part of Alexandra Pharand’s books.
Photo : Radio-Canada / Anne-Louise Despatie
However, teachers, just like parents, would like more precise guidelines from the ministry, or even a list of compulsory reading offered to all secondary school students. This list would include classics of French and Quebec literature.
We must question the value of the works we put forward. That’s a real debate that teachers should have among themselves. Should we at all costs lock ourselves into a logic where it is the ministry that decides for us? Absolutely not. We must define what a literary work is, define what a classic is in particular, maintains Michel Stringer, who has taught for more than 20 years at the Sophie-Barat School.
He is from this generation of teachers who have completed a bachelor’s degree in literature, followed by a teaching certificate (and who assiduously study literature). Moreover, Michel Stringer’s students will soon have to produce an argumentative text on what a classic is.
Their thinking is well underway.
It’s something that lasts over time, which still has relevance, and also it depicts a bit of an era, evokes for example Sandrine Auger, secondary 4 student at Sophie-Barat.
I read 1984 by George Orwell and I really liked it. It’s a classic dystopia, continues Anouck De Sulzer Wart.
A classic is a work that took a while to be designated as a classic. It’s still something that must change our perception, I think, concludes Eudes Houssou.
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