The struggles and successes of English school boards tell a story
Iread with interest a recent article in The Gazette by education reporter Janet Bagnall about the struggles and successes of Quebec’s English school boards (“Quebec’s English school boards face many woes,” Jan. 23).
The relationship between education and society tells a story. Here in Quebec, it is not a stretch to say that the evolution of our education system gives us a snapshot of our social and political history.
What we now recognize as modern-day schooling — with its schoolboard structures and state-approved curricula — is something that developed from the 19th century onward in tandem with the rise of democratic nation-states. Schools were established, more or less, as spaces where national citizens are created. This is as true in Quebec as it is in most Western democratic societies.
This is why, for example, the government’s recent proposed curriculum changes that would limit English instruction in French elementary schools and increase the teaching of sovereignty have a cer- tain coherence, given the “national project” of the Parti Québécois.
It is also why the challenges the English school boards are faced with — declining enrolment rates, deep budget cuts — are linked in complex ways to the broader challenges facing Quebec’s Englishspeaking communities as they grapple with what kind of role and place they have in Quebec’s changing social and political landscape.
One of the roles of schools has been — and to a large extent, still is — to produce a uniform citizenry that can be identified and organized along religious, linguistic or cultural lines. A clearly bounded citizenry is necessary to legitimize a clearly bounded nation-state.
Of course, societies are messier than that — which, from my perspective, makes our communities so much more interesting. Minority groups, by their very presence, chal- lenge ideas about national uniformity. Again, Quebec is no exception.
If we track how the content and structure of the education system in Quebec have evolved from the 17th century all the way to the present day, four clear thematic areas emerge: religion; language; nationalism and nation-building; and immigration, diversity and integration. Sound familiar?
During the 17th century and most of the 18th century, there was no organized school network in Nouvelle France. Schools were established and run by the Catholic Church. Under the English colonial regime (1760-1867), the “province of Quebec” became officially Protestant, despite the fact that the majority of the population remained francophone and Catholic.
One of the most important developments in the history of the Quebec school system was the creation of the commission scolaire in 1845. Prior to this, teachers or instructors moved freely from parish to parish. Students were organized, more or less, along Protestant and Catholic religious lines. Min- ority groups — Jews, Irish (Catholic, English-speaking) — posed certain kinds of “problems” since they did not fit cleanly into these predetermined religious and linguistic categories.
The confessional character and structural organization of the school system in Quebec would continue almost without modification from 1875 until 1964.
The Quiet Revolution was, of course, a pivotal period in the history of Quebec, marked by social upheaval, sweeping secularization and the rise of francophone political nationalism. Massive economic and social reforms included the provincial government wresting education — as well as health care and other social services — from the control of the Catholic Church. An important part of this process was the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Education (known as the Parent Commission). The central theme of the report was that education should not be a luxury but a right, and recommendations stressed the importance of increased and freer access to universities and other forms of higher education for all Quebecers. (Again, sound familiar?)
Largely as a result of the recommendations put forward by the Parent Commission, education in a “modern” Quebec is characterized by secularism, accessible education, dominance of French language and culture and debates on how best to “manage” the increasing challenges of diversity and pluralism in schools.
This brings us to the challenges and successes of the current English-language school boards, as they are part of the ongoing story of Quebec.
As we move forward together, the bottom line may be as simple as this: parents today — regardless of our linguistic, cultural or religious identifications — want the best education and most opportunities for our kids. We want schools that reflect our changing communities. The English school boards bring important lessons and contributions to this conversation.