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Do Quebec's history teachers teach that the province was a bleak, backward place until the Quiet Revolution, when separatism replaced Catholicism as the state religion?
Probably a mixed bag as different French schools may have different priorities and different teachers may have stronger biases on various issues, one thing is for sure the history taught in Quebec French schools is very pro Quebec.
There is a widespread perception among anglophones that it is extremely biased and that it is intended to breed little future separatists.
Overall, when cross-Canada testing on historical knowledge is done Quebec students and Quebecers in general often score the highest of anyone in the country.
There is a widespread perception among anglophones that it is extremely biased and that it is intended to breed little future separatists.
Overall, when cross-Canada testing on historical knowledge is done Quebec students and Quebecers in general often score the highest of anyone in the country.
Shouldnt be too hard to come up with a link proving Quebec students are the best in the country.
Or is this just an opinion?
I have no doubt Quebec students are top of the class in Canada for their knowledge of Quebec's history..
Have any of you ever taken the Quebec history course or do you have kids who have? There isn't any lee-way for individual teachers to be influencing the students, it's a strict curriculum with a set textbook and goals. Fact is, I took the history of Quebec and Canada course seven years ago when I was in highschool and while I'm sure it's true that Quebec students score well, it's undoutably a course with a very specific political agenda. How does it do this? By selecting very specifically what to teach, what not to teach, and how much emphasis should be put on what in order to craft a cohesive and universal narrative. For example, they teach about the rebellion in Lower Canada led by Louis Joseph Papineau but do not mention the simultaneous rebellion going on in Upper Canada. This gives the idea that it was some Quebec specific rebellion against the crown while everyone else was sitting on their butts, for the obvious purpose of undercutting the idea that the ancestors of the Quebeckers worked together with or had common experiences with the people in the other colonies. Same with NEVER FRIGGIN MENTIONING THE WAR OF 1812! Why? Because the whole country was working in concert to protect against an American incursion, which could stir up sentiments of Canadian unity. It's totally a piece of separatist propaganda.
As for the OP's question, yes, we're mostly shown a vision of a corrupt and oppressed Quebec under Duplessis and then it's contrasted with the progress of the Quiet Revolution. And there's definitely truth there, my grandparents (who were Catholic) told me stories about living in Quebec in the fifties and it was bleak. They lived in the countryside, almost none of which had gotten electricity at that time, and my devout Dutch Catholic grandparents left the church too because it was a very patronizing and oppressive organization. My uncle was left handed and the nuns, who ran the school, would hit him if he wrote with his left hand because it was a sign of the devil being in him. Ignorance was rampant in their community. The priests were up on their high horses and would not come to give my grandmother confession when she became paralyzed and could not longer come to church. And the worst of all, they decided that since my grandparents were 'stupid poor immigrants' that when my aunt died of cancer at eleven they'd just take it upon themselves to handle her burial without bothering to inform the family. She died in the hospital and then the church decided to throw her body into an unmarked pauper's grave! No one was there but my other young aunt who was pulled out of class by a nun, and it haunted my grandmother to her very last day that her daughter was not buried on consecrated ground.
This was the attitude of the Catholic Church at this time, and in many ways they truly did work to keep people ignorant as they had a very patronizing attitude that it was better if the flock stayed simple as so they wouldn't be tempted to "stray". That ain't my school texts talking, it's what I've learned from talking to old timers who were there, and some of my own independent readings. I can see why the Quiet Revolution happened in those circumstances, the local iteration of the Roman Catholic Church seems to have had a very bad attitude that people just couldn't put up with anymore.
Shouldnt be too hard to come up with a link proving Quebec students are the best in the country.
Or is this just an opinion?
I have no doubt Quebec students are top of the class in Canada for their knowledge of Quebec's history..
Not related to test results but interesting just the same:
Have any of you ever taken the Quebec history course or do you have kids who have? .
I have kids in Quebec francophone schools at the moment but not quite in high school yet. They have history and it is very territorially focused on Quebec. They have touched on aboriginals, Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain.
At this stage at least, it's not terribly different from what I learned in francophone and even anglophone schools in the ROC (talking about Ontario and the Maritimes here - not sure about the West).
A senior manager of one of well known "respectful" companies here in Montreal (originally he's from Quebec city) revealed me that he wasn't sure who participated in WW2. He also couldn't tell who defeated who-- Germans Russians or other way around .
Made me think they don't teach world history too well here, though I'm not sure, haven't been interested in this yet.
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