Beautiful research journalism from Marie-Laurence Delainey from Newspaper. Dig around and find the information that right-thinking society would prefer not to know.
The conclusion of his investigation: private schools give priority to air conditioning their students’ classes, public schools give priority to air conditioning to administrators’ offices. And the numbers are not at all ambiguous.
60% of public schools invest in the air conditioning of administration offices compared to barely 5% in the private sector. Only 17% of public schools have prioritized classroom air conditioning. In the private sector, classes are 57% air-conditioned.
Oh yes! Private schools, which some like to describe as elitist, focus on the well-being of students. The public, which is presented as truly serving the people, relies primarily on the comfort of the bosses.
Question of priority
Can we imagine that if the student is placed at the center of priorities in the private sector in terms of air conditioning, the same student also finds himself at the center of priorities in other aspects of school life? This is what pushes middle-class parents to make sacrifices, feeling that because we pay, we have the right to demand quality of service.
By the way, what private school does first is the natural and logical choice. Late afternoon on a hot June day, the heat, humidity (and maybe the smells) won’t get as bad in a single person’s office as it will in a classroom of 25 teenagers. Human logic dictates that a group’s premises should be air-conditioned as a priority.
Institutional logic would also like us to come back to the question: school exists for whom? For students or for staff? However, in public networks, such as health and education, this institutional logic has been reversed. Due to union power relations, institutions exist first and foremost for their staff.
Read the collective agreements, take a look at the rules and constraints, the customers come second. The user has no power relationship, he is a number in a system. His fate is subject to the goodwill of the machine and is based on the hope of finding a dedicated employee.
Improving public schools
Let me be clear, I am not happy with the bad choices made by public schools. Quebec needs stronger, better-equipped public schools capable of offering a variety of specific programs to as many children as possible.
I will applaud any government that invests massively to equip our public schools with better gymnasiums, arts rooms, well-appointed premises. And let’s pull out all the stops in disadvantaged neighborhoods to prove to young people that society believes in education.
I just want to remind you how absurd it is to think that we will improve public schools by cutting private schools.
And emphasize that those who formed human chains in favor of public schools… demanded, without knowing it, funds to air-condition the bosses’ offices.
