Friday, April 30, 2010
Lying to get out is a good thing, by Francis Chartrand

"Lying to get out is a good thing" was the title and theme of an exercise of a French father was outraged we sent Pour une école libre au Québec (see link here).
Everyone in the class their child should copy the text as it stood then correct spelling errors.
No discussion on the merits of this message to correct dictation.
When questioned, the father of the student said he was outraged by this exercise in a class of relativistic secondary school in Quebec in the Montreal area.
I wonder if the teacher who corrected the text has not asked some questions of morality to the student ...
Me, being a teacher, I'd have not corrected his text, I would have made him aware of what he writes if he did not want a 0.
Let's make sure that the message is clear, it's not just spelling errors that should be corrected in schools. Education is also responsible for the development of judgement.
Link
Labels: Education, Francis Chartrand
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Barbara Kay: Quebec's new state religion -- cultural relativism, by Barbara Kay

In September 2008, after years of pre-planning by elites without public consultation, Quebec’s Ministry of Education established a province-wide, compulsory pedagogical program called Éthique et Culture Religieuse (ÉCR).
All Quebec students — public, private, even the homeschooled — must take ÉCR (with the exception of one secondary school year) from age six through high school.
On its sunny face, the ÉCR program introduces students to the rich variety of religious beliefs and rituals in today’s “intercultural” Quebec, where all citizens “live together in the bosom of a Quebec [that is] democratic and open to the world.”
But a newly landed bombshell amongst Quebec’s chattering classes, a study produced by Ethnic Studies Phd candidate Joëlle Quérin for the Institut de Recherche sur le Québec, persuasively argues that the ideology behind the course is anything but benign, reinforcing concerns about this troubling program I expressed in these pages last December.
Following a close analysis of the course’s stated objectives, content, teachers’ roles and suggested activities, Quérin pulls no punches in her conclusion: “I wanted to verify if the course gives knowledge to children or if it indoctrinates them. I observed that it was the second alternative that prevailed.”
Two values dominate the program’s objectives: learning to “vivre ensemble” (live together) and arriving at the “bien commun” (the common good). How does ÉCR produce social harmony? By constant “dialogue” and “recognition” of other cultures, which can only be accomplished, in the words of ÉCR mandarin Georges Leroux, by inculcating in children “absolute respect for every religious position.”
But according to ÉCR, “every religious position” includes pagan animism, witchcraft (Wiccans “are women like any other in daily life”), and the nutbar Raëlian Movement (“technologically, [the Raëlians are 25,000 years in advance of us”). To bundle superstitions and cults together with authentic religions, then demand deference to all, is to discourage actual respect for any but the state religion of “normative pluralism,” the real aim of the program.
In its indifference to objective knowledge, in its crusade to hallow cultural relativism and a strictly Charter-of-rights based identity, ÉCR stimulates heritage students’ detachment from their own cultural touchstones, and chills critical thinking in all students.
Quérin cites, for example, one instance where students were invited to redesign the Quebec flag, replacing the cross with a more “inclusive” symbol, and another, an activity called “Youpi! Ma religion à moi!” (my own religion!) in which religions actually invented by students are accorded the same esteem as real ones. Such subversive pedagogical impulses dismissively mock Quebec’s unique culture, based, like all others, in a shared language, religion and collective values formed over time.
In the ÉCR scheme, teachers do not actually convey knowledge, but rather “plan, organize activities, advise, accompany, encourage, support … make suggestions, but never impose.”
But they must and do “impose” sometimes. The program harps relentlessly on “dialogue” as the principal vehicle for learning to “vivre ensemble.” But if, according to an editing team spokesman, the dialogue does not follow a politically correct script — that is, if students of independent mind or critical point of view diverge in behaviour or words from the prescribed “recognition” mantra: all cultural traditions are equal; all beliefs are good — “The teacher must intervene immediately to stop it on the spot. Any attack in class on the dignity of the person or the common good must be immediately denounced, because it is not tolerated in our society. In that [respect], the program of Ethical and Religious Culture is not neutral.”Thus Quérin darkly warns: “After having followed the ÉCR course for 10 years, the students won’t have a great knowledge of religions, but one thing is sure: no [cultural] accommodation will seem unreasonable to them.”
A May 2009 Léger marketing poll on ÉCR found that 76% of québécois prefer a choice in religious education; they think their elites have shown contempt for the population. Many parents are demanding ÉCR exemptions, if not outright abolition of the program. Grassroots resistance movements — strange bedfellows of anti-clericalists, practicing Catholics and nationalists, each with their own support network — are pushing back through political activism, the media and the courts.
As well they should. ÉCR is a creepy state foray into social engineering. Disguised as multicultural feel-goodism, the program is in reality the utopian Quebec Left’s strategic plan for societal transformation. Their tactics: the appropriation of parents’ natural and rightful authority over their children’s religious upbringing; the willful erosion of children’s pride in their Quebec patrimony; and the slow suffocation of students’ inherent curiosity and intellectual autonomy.
If Quebec does not wish to end up in the sick ward of western cultures, ÉCR must be excised in the operating theatre of popular resistance.
Link
Labels: Barbara Kay, Education, Québec
Friday, December 04, 2009
Cult of personality excessive in American schools?, by Marie-Eve Martineau

Relatives of several U.S. states (New Jersey, Maryland) complain of the excessive politicization of their schools. It would, indeed, the children sing odes to the glory of Obama. One of the songs, which incorporates an air well known in the United States, changing the name of Jesus with that of Obama.
In the case of New Jersey school director initially refused to comment on the video merely to condemn the capture of the video ... We learn, moreover, that the song also boasts equal pay was part of celebrations of the Month Black History in the United States.
Words of the first song
Mm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
He said that all must lend a hand
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be fair today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
He said red, yellow, black or white
All are equal in His sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
Yes!
Mmm, mmm, mm
Barack Hussein Obama
Words of the second song
Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all doth say "hooray!" [February 2009?]
Hooray, Mr. President! You're number one!
The first black American to lead this great nation!
Hooray, Mr. President we honor your great shots
To make this country's economy number one again!
Hooray Mr. President, we're really proud of you!
And we stand for all Americans under the great Red, White and Blue!
So continue ---- Mr. President we know you'll do the trick
So here's a hearty hip-hooray ----
Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!
Hip, hip hooray!
Link
Labels: Children, Education, Marie-Êve Marineau, Obama, United States
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Great "Darkness": family portrait monochrome, grin, shortage Francocentrism and Anon, by Noémie Cournoyer

There is a simplistic mythology of Quebec history: Before it was bad and sad, and now it's finally happy. All statistics on the increase in suicides among youth, unemployment, a slow decline (and the requirement to have two earners in a family), the largest use of drugs, the ever-important d ' abortions, the increasing number of broken families will not change anything.
It is an article of faith and we must propagate the myth (fabula is propaganda).
We had already seen the treatment that was a caricature book LIDEC (with legal errors, and papal history in some cases).
Editions of La Pensée (made famous by a radio host for their bias in favor of Ms. Françoise David) is needed to contribute to the spread of the simplistic myth.
The booklet manual 1st RCT secondary looks so on the societal changes that followed the advent of the Quiet Revolution.
In the left column of scenes of life of 50 years, in the right column of the corresponding scenes of the 2000s.
What is happening now there immediately?
The family portrait is monochrome (yes, of course the pictures were often, but life was it?), everyone is serious in 1950. Today, everything is color and smiles.
In the schoolyard, the nun who oversees sports a grin authoritarian. The children have been experiencing a shortage of cultural topics and a Franco-French cultural somewhat open to the world, while today the prevailing cultural wealth that finally opens in a globalized world (and not standardization and Americanization of course).
Finally, the class of the 50s Unisex (how horrible!) is dominated by a nun who seems to mumble a strong voice lesson while students are passive on their bench. Nothing to do with classes today where young chemists (down with classic culture!) work and discover their own small groups and experience modern science under the approving eyes of a charming host of class smiling and benevolent. A malevolent spirit will notice that in the modern classroom are valued roles held by women: the moderator, the two girls who handle tube.
Picture
On the myth of the Great Darkness, read
The example of Quebec's past to the twenty-first century;
The myth of the Great Darkness and Quebec underdeveloped;
The classical colleges;
Statism and the decline of Quebec;
The Quiet Revolution: break or turning point?
Excerpts:
On the eve of the Quiet Revolution, Quebec is not an underdeveloped society. Half of Francophones are employed ... in the service sector? In 1931, the census shows that few people still lived on agriculture and that 2 / 3 of the workforce employed in the secondary sector (manufacturing) or tertiary (services). The manufacturing industry had always grown here at the same pace as in Ontario, and has been since Confederation. Throughout the twentieth century, the proportion of Quebec workers working in the industrial sector is comparable to the proportions observed in the United States and several European countries.
There does not further delay of urbanization in the province. Migration to cities is steadily since the late nineteenth century. Quebec has an even higher rate than urban Ontario from 1900 until the 2nd World War and would remain above the Canadian average thereafter (for a threshold of urbanization of 10 000 inhabitants ).
[...]
This suggests that Quebec francophones have never had the mentality of "born to a roll, and for good reason. In 1953, Quebec had the second per capita income highest in the world after the United States (excluding the rest of Canada). Did we really need the Quiet Revolution and state intervention to lift Quebecers that alleged "Great Darkness"? Absolutely not! Quebecers were developed and upgraded by themselves, and long, without state support.
[...]
Jean-Luc Migué Statism and decline in Quebec: Review of the Quiet Revolution overturns the conventional view and argues that the Quiet Revolution, far from the boom period that has allowed Quebec to have access to modernity and to catch up its delay, has instead resulted in degeneration economic, political and social response to dramatic growth of the state. It is from this moment that the gap between the standard of living of Quebecers and Ontarians began to increase, the decline of Montreal has accelerated for the benefit of Toronto, that linguistic conflict and political worse, that sectors such as health and education have suffered the onslaught of ever more intrusive bureaucracy. Quebec is of course a dynamic company with an enviable standard of living, but our integration into the capitalist economy in North America that brings these benefits. All sectors controlled by the state are themselves perpetually in crisis.
To not slow the loading of this page by too many color images, we stored five pages of this activity (SAE) here.
Link
Labels: Children, Education, Noémie Cournoyer, Québec
The boys, weaker sex at school, by Marie-Êve Marineau

Save the boys!, Jean-Louis Auduc, part but not against the law-thread Go Girls! (Seuil, 1992) and What's New in girls? (Nathan, 2007), sociologists Christian Baudelot and Roger Establet.
If social inequalities in access to education are now questioned and give rise to the establishment of public policies, there is another divide largely ignored. Yet again, the numbers are overwhelming: boys and girls are not equal in class. Of the 150 000 young people leaving without any qualifications in the education system in which the media often tell us, we do not say that over 100 000 are boys. From elementary school, boys show a delay in the acquisition of reading and writing and clog structures for students in difficulty or perpetrators of violent behavior. The sexual divide is often more significant than the social divide in the analysis of school careers. The traditional studies, developed in terms of economic inequality and cultural, must evolve to a place in this disturbing reality. School failure has a sex. Claiming to solve this societal problem without taking into account one of its main features is illusory.
A bad score that continues from primary to tertiary, as seven out of ten women have a tank or a diploma postbac, against six out of ten men. According to 2008-2009 figures from the Ministry of Education, girls are 31% to get one as good or very good bac S (which do not attract the scientists, but strong), against 24% of boys.
Why such a difference and such a failure? "The girls, or poorly recognized in the house, have over-invested in the school and they are recognized, the author explains, deputy director of the IUFM Paris-XII Val de Marne at Creteil. Conversely, boys are often found in their family but they live in an identity crisis at school. (...) The belief of their superiority confronts the boys to insoluble contradictions do not result in a superior intellectual girls in their class."
We note immediately that the obvious physical precocity of girls do not seem to have touched the author as a possible explanation for the difference in results between boys and girls, nor the fact that the school promotes attitudes traditionally "female": listening and obedience.
Results for author: The boys are taken to devalue the academic knowledge and to rebel against the school. The spiral of failure is initiated. She checks into the direction where the girls are under-represented in the so-called short courses (CAP, BEP, Bac STI, bac pro, etc..) However, they are overrepresented in higher education, except networks of excellence, where boys fro before them.
Indeed, despite the best educational pathways, girls less often than they choose the channels of the elite. This situation is linked to a "cultural atavism" that prevents "shake the boundaries of male and female within the family" by the author. Recall that, according to other authors, it is simply a strategy to choose careers that allow maternity and employment (by avoiding areas where knowledge quickly becomes obsolete). According to a study (March 2009) of the National Fund for Family Allowances, two thirds of parenting and household work based on women.
The author's family - one that students and the one reproduced - there she is, the great fault ... "The professional discrimination no longer find their roots in the institutional inequalities, whether at school or in the laws, but in private homes and consciences," writes the author. Discrimination based on traditional images of both sexes who have strong repercussions on the education of each other. It does not, however, how the struggle for adequate fight against these stereotypes would solve the problems of boys!
The author argues that the fact of less verbally and physically stimulate the boys (which wants stronger) has a direct influence on language acquisition slower in male children. And therefore their education. One wonders which conveys stereotypes here.
Many boys "do not rise forever the stereotype that often embodies the parenting that verbal communication is a skill largely female," says Jean-Louis Auduc. In contrast, the image of women portrayed in some circles "to help girls develop the ability to listen and order which will be an asset to the school." And in society? This is all the more true as we descend the social ladder, and ultimately more damaging to boys from disadvantaged backgrounds. Kings home, they are disallowed in school, where, according to the author, the macho mentality places them in a position of rebels, therefore refusal and failure. In short, if the boys are not doing it because boys are not educated as girls.
How to overcome this situation? For the author, struggling against the macho stereotypes and limiting mixed paradoxically, the author proposes that does not mean campaigning for the return of single-sex classes, but questioned "the appropriateness of some activities where to better manage the entire class, boys and girls are separated.
Worst case for Le Monde but not unrealistic: it is also conceivable that the gender gap will decrease with the continued rise of girls. By dint of closer social positions of the boys, they also adopt the codes and develop turn perverse aspects still own stereotypes of sex "safe". But would it be a victory for them?
This is the portrait of the painful adjustment to male school that this essay focuses. These include social and cultural reasons that predispose boys to fail and girls to succeed in order to propose concrete solutions to this problem collectively.
Source : Le Monde and the publisher
Link
Labels: Children, Education, Marie-Êve Marineau
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