Some of the positions we have heard over the past week on the future Culture and Quebec Citizenship course (which will replace the Ethics and Religious Culture course) have in my eyes been deeply distressing.
I saw, in snapshot, some of the most heartbreaking and saddest things in the life of the mind and of democratic conversation today, made up of this certainty of knowing before even making sure to know the subject on which we pronounce ourselves, coupled with the certainty of being virtuous.
It is not surprising, therefore, that both of them sometimes resemble religions by and for which the ungodly and unbelievers are excommunicated. What then goes by the wayside, it is in particular a certain art of the nuance, a certain restraint in the intellectual life called prudence, at the same time as the openness to the other and the possibility of exchanging with him by thinking. be able to learn something from it. If you’ve never argued with someone who doesn’t think like you, you don’t even really know what you’re thinking, a certain JS Mill was saying in essence, and with good reason …
A class I was hoping for …
We may know: having studied it closely, I wanted the ECR course to be abolished and I even co-edited a book defending this position. But I also thought, and have also said, that this course was not without merits. Knowledge of religion is desirable, as is the development of critical thinking and the art of dialogue. In addition, and I want to put it down here in writing, I have the deepest respect for Mr. Georges Leroux, one of the designers of this course, an immensely learned, brilliant man and a gentleman like few in a lifetime. . We have spoken often and we still can, including these two courses about which we disagree.
I wanted us to set up … a citizenship course. I developed this idea in particular in an article that can be read in the last issue of the review Argument. If you get your hands on it, you will see many points of contact between what I was advocating and the new course, in the design of which I have not been consulted or involved in any way, directly or indirectly.
I welcome the desire to develop critical thinking and the capacity for dialogue in these hours of dangerous polarization; that we want to make known the new media and their perils and warn against them; that we want to talk about sexuality; make our political institutions known; talk about freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. And many other subjects that the future citizen must know, the future citizen.
I also made in my article state of the dangers, the pitfalls that such a course presents. They are, along with others that I had not mentioned, quite present and threatening when the new course is announced.
I suggest that before deciding on it with some assurance, one should wait to learn more about what exactly will be taught; who will do it and how these teachers will be trained; and how it will be implemented.
More specifically, I suggest that in order to decide on this course, certain questions should be present in the minds of all those interested in education in Quebec – which includes, I hope, each of us. Here are a few – and you will certainly add more. The answers given largely depend on the judgment that will be made on this course.
… and that I will judge on documents
Two of the very serious dangers of such a course are indoctrination and propaganda. How do we define them, which is of course necessary to recognize them? What steps are taken to avoid them? Are they reasonably adequate?
What training is offered on this subject, but also on all the vast and often complex content that must be covered, to the people who will be teaching this course?
Teaching critical thinking is commendable. But how do you go about doing it? What place is given to philosophy for children? Have we seriously considered that in addition to knowledge, critical thinking requires dispositions, virtues (say: epistemic)? How do we want them to be developed? Not easy…
We will present, and this is all the better and necessary for the future citizen, our political institutions. What critical perspective will we develop on this subject, and how?
Culture will occupy a large place in the announced course. How will we avoid duplication with other courses? What place will we give to religion, which we will have to talk about? What about the less glorious aspects of this culture and our history – of our relationship with Aboriginals, for example?
Sensitive subjects and controversial questions are on the program of this course, which can undoubtedly be discussed with adolescents, while others cannot be addressed with younger ones. How do we deploy this curriculum over time while respecting all that this implies?
We are going, and that’s good, to implement the course on a small scale before generalizing it to the entire network. But how are we going to assess this implementation? Who’s gonna do it ? How will we take into account what we discover?
I look forward to having answers to these questions (and others that I have not been able to recall here) in order to formulate a prudent and nuanced judgment on this course.