Culture and citizenship: A look at the new course taught in Quebec schools

Article content

As students returned to elementary and high school classes in late August, teachers around the province were preparing for the full rollout of the new culture and citizenship in Quebec (CCQ) course.

The planned provincewide implementation of the civics course in the fall of 2023 was delayed and replaced with an optional year. Despite the extra preparation time, many teachers still feel unprepared to lead this course.

Article content

“Teachers are feeling overwhelmed,” said Lori Newton, president of the Montreal Teachers Association. “There was some very basic training that happened in the winter and spring of the past school year, which really seemed to be more of an overview of the program.”

The Coalition Avenir Québec government announced the new class in 2021 to replace the ethics and religious culture (ERC) course, which the CAQ said was too anchored in religion. CCQ covers topics ranging from democracy, human rights and Indigenous issues to sex education.

The rollout drew criticism at the start of the school year, when CBC reported that the textbooks were not yet available. Two versions are now available in French, leaving school boards to choose which one to use, but neither has been translated into English, according to Anne-Marie De Silva, the CCQ consultant for the English Montreal School Board.

The results of a poll conducted by the Fédération des syndicats de l’enseignement (FSE-CSQ), which were published in May, also showed that 81 per cent of teachers did not feel trained and supported enough to start teaching CCQ.

Article content

“This course encompasses some very vastly different topics,” said Newton. “We’re including financial education, sexuality education, technology education on how to use technology wisely and appropriately. It really covers so much that it’s not one day of quote-unquote ‘training’ in March that is going to make teachers feel prepared for this.”

According to the course program, the aims of CCQ are to “prepare (students) to exercise citizenship in Quebec” by exploring topics such as critical thinking, ethics, dialogue and sociology.

In an email, Education Ministry spokesperson Bryan St-Louis wrote that the training “allowed teaching staff to take ownership of the major foundations, aims, skills and major themes of the provisional program.”

The training was online and optional. According to the FSE-CSQ poll, only 45 per cent of respondents participated. Of that group, 67 per cent felt the training did not sufficiently prepare them to teach the course.

Despite the bumps in the rollout, many teachers and education specialists still advocate for the new course. According to De Silva, CCQ represents an opportunity to address important current issues with students.

Article content

Article content

“Obviously, it’s difficult to change,” she said. “But at the same time, because society is changing so quickly and there are so many new issues coming up, the school system has to stay relevant. We have to reflect that. We have to be teaching the kids the 21st-century skills they need moving forward — not just for now, but in the future.”

De Silva explained that the CCQ course allows teachers to explore topics in a more holistic way.

“The problem with the ethics and religious culture (course) is that teachers had to put on two different hats. You were teaching ethics, and you took that hat off and you put on your religious culture hat. They weren’t really related to each other,” she said.

CCQ has a more cohesive and intersectional approach to the issues it addresses, the goal being for topics to flow into one another, De Silva explained. For example, a topic like human rights can lead into children’s rights, and from there to environmental issues, role models, gender inequalities or body image.

The course also aims to build on these topics from Grade 1 to 11, introducing them gently to younger students and moving on to difficult and sensitive subjects later on.

Article content

“As the kids get older, it gets increasingly sophisticated,” said De Silva, “but it’s not necessarily the first time they’ve heard of it. By the time they’re old enough to start reflecting on what were the real issues there, they already have a basic understanding of what happened.”

The course was developed in collaboration with various community groups. David Vigneault of the First Nations Education Council (FNEC) said that while CCQ is not yet perfect, the consultation helped create a program that includes Indigenous perspectives in the conversation.

“The way the elements were treated, at least as far as I’ve seen, it was done with an open-mindedness and a sensibility that is appreciated,” said Vigneault, who works as an information and communications technology educational adviser at the FNEC.

For Dr. Sabrina Jafralie, who teaches CCQ at Westmount High School and lectures to future teachers at McGill University, there is a lot teachers can do with a course like this, and a lot students can gain from having these conversations in a structured context.

Values-based courses are Jafralie’s bread and butter. She has been teaching them for 25 years, including 19 years in Quebec, and has seen different iterations. She said one of the main problems with CCQ is that there are very few instructors who, like her, teach the course exclusively. Most teachers have a primary subject — like math, history or English — to which CCQ is added to fill their weekly hours, she explained.

Article content

“There’s this illusion of specialty, which doesn’t exist in Quebec,” she said of teaching values-based courses. “And then there are the teachers … who get CCQ on the schedule and (think): ‘Oh, well, you know what? I also teach history, so I’m just going to continue my history lectures.’ Because there’s always a scarcity of time (to cover) topics.”

Vigneault also has training in values-based courses and previously taught ethics and religious culture. He pointed out the lower training standards for CCQ teachers.

“Would we accept a teacher in, I don’t know, advanced math who has no competencies to teach math? Of course not,” he said.

Values-based courses like CCQ are unlike others in the sense that teachers are expected to mediate discussion with students and share knowledge of societal issues, while leaving room for students to form their own opinions.

“The idea is not to answer these ethical questions at all,” explained De Silva. “The idea is to try to mitigate the way the internet and social media encourages you not to think too deeply about anything.”

Mediating debates among children and teenagers requires a specific skill set and training, according to Vigneault.

Article content

“You have to be able to direct the debate and be able to ask the right questions,” he said. “You have to lead the student, not towards an answer, but towards a reflection process, and it isn’t everyone who can do that. It isn’t everyone who can do it in a neutral and impartial way.”

Jafralie pointed out the importance of ensuring that the classroom is a safe space where students can ask questions about sensitive topics while respecting other students’ identities.

A course like CCQ is ever-changing by nature, as current events and perspectives shift. Education professionals say the freedom of an open program allows teachers to follow their students in whichever direction they want to explore.

“A lot of schools shared a desire to teach the course, but in a way that reflects their culture, their values, their traditions,” said Vigneault. “The way the course is built, it gives us the latitude to be able to meet the objectives that the Ministry of Education thought were important to include, but to address those elements in a way that corresponds to what member communities want to teach their kids.”

Article content

However, Jafralie said the downside of the open program is that the content is so broad that teachers can avoid topics they feel uncomfortable with — even if those topics might benefit students.

“It’s not that the program is horrible,” she said. “It’s just that it’s a lip-service-paying program. If a teacher does not receive adequate training, it’s very scary to teach values.”

The course is expected to evolve as teachers see how it plays out in classrooms. According to Education Ministry spokesperson St-Louis, “experiences from the pilot in targeted schools in 2022-2023 and the optional implementation in 2023-2024 suggest that the confidence of teaching staff is strengthened by teaching the program.”

But for many education professionals, the question is how much the government will value CCQ now that the promise to replace the ethics and religious culture course has been fulfilled.

“I’m often saying it’s political puppetry. Every time there’s a political distraction, or you want to rile up certain voters, or you want to bring something to the table, we start talking about laicity and we start talking about religiosity,” said Jafralie. “But when you look at the values of the course, and the teacher who has to teach it, that’s where I would argue the government falls short — falls short all the time. Whether it’s ERC, CCQ, PBC, whatever they want to rename it, it will always fall short in this category.”

The feeling is echoed by Vigneault, who hopes the CCQ course will keep evolving with current issues and live up to its goals.

“What place do we give to a course like that, as a society?” he mused. “Yes, we made a new course. Yes, we wanted it to be more representative of current issues we’re going through, not just in Quebec, but around the world. Now, the question is: How important is it to us that the course be taught by someone who has the competencies to teach it well, without influencing the students? That’s what we need to ask ourselves.”

Article content

Article content