This is briefly what the French and Quebec education ministers jointly proclaim in an open letter obtained by Radio-Canada entitled The school for freedom, against obscurantism
†
Jean-Michel Blanquer and Jean-François Roberge denounce the excess
and the excesses
of this ideology and methods imported directly from certain American college campuses and a thousand miles from the values of respect and tolerance on which our democracies are based
†
A movement
they say, who? is a breeding ground for all the extremes that threaten the cohesion of our societies
†
Both ministers refer directly to the thousands of books destroyed, some of which were burned and buried by an Ontario school board. A ceremony of purification by flame
was organized in 2019.
This story, revealed by Radio-Canada, went viral and sparked the outrage of many politicians.
† The banishment of personalities, shows and conferences, social media bullying, censorship, submission of science to ideology, erasure of history to the burning of books are all attacks on freedom of speech and civic responsibility, which take us back to the most obscurant times of our western societies. †
A pernicious influence
In their eyes, the refusal
to be exposed to opposing points of view shows a worrying decline in the democratic spirit
† So there would be a growing unease with debate and dialogue
† A phenomenon
That affects France as much as Quebec
they write.
According to Jean-Michel Blanquer and Jean-François Robberge it is necessary fight at all costs against the radicalization of positions and the culture of intolerance and erasure
but also against the pernicious influence
of this culture.
† It is not by renouncing who we are or by ignoring where we come from, as claimed by the “murderers of memory”, that we can celebrate progress and project ourselves into the future. †
The school, they say, would be a… primordial bulwark against ignorance and obscurantism
†
A meeting of young people
will be organized by the governments of Quebec and France to debate these issues together with intellectuals
†
A French initiative
This desire to write an open letter signed by representatives of France and Quebec comes from Paris. When our minister heard the news of the burnt books in the French media, our minister approached his counterpart in Quebec and offered him a joint speech
explains a spokesperson for Jean-Michel Blanquer.
This one obscurantism
come complicate
the work of teachers, Jean-François Robberge laments, at Radio-Canada. In France, as in Quebec, he notes: we see that there is a certain culture of exile that actually prevents us from fulfilling the mission of the school. We want schools where freedom of speech is queen
†
Wokism brought Trump to power, Blanquer says
Last week, Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer caused controversy in France by evoking the term awake, which, however, does not appear in this open letter.
France and its youth must escape
until wokism
he told the newspaper the World (New window)† In the United States, this ideology was able to bring Donald Trump to power through reaction
the French minister stated, while confirming that he was not obsessed with wokism
†
I’m just against the idea of our young people being offered to approach social life through a competition of resentment.
Tipped as candidates for next spring’s presidential election, Éric Zemmour, sometimes described as a French Donald Trump, and Xavier Bertrand have also strongly denounced this ideology.
In Quebec, this term was also adopted by Prime Minister François Legault last month. The latter had qualified the co-head of Quebec Solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, for wake, before giving his own definition of the word.
For François Legault, a awake is someone who sees discrimination everywhere
†
With the collaboration of Sébastien Bovet