I’ve covered schools diligently for ten years and have never, ever, ever read anything as crazy as the Department of Education’s investigation report1 about the Bedford elementary school of the Montreal school service center (CSSDM).
Published at 7:45 p.m.
Short summary of the facts. In 2023, journalist Valérie Lebeuf, from 98.5 FM, investigated a toxic climate at the Bedford school, in Côte-des-Neiges2. She struggled, suffering stubborn denials from the Teachers’ Alliance and the CSSDM.
What Valérie Lebeuf revealed was that teachers (mainly) of North African origin created a reign of terror at the Bedford school, with widespread psychological harassment against colleagues and students.
For example, these teachers refused remedial teachers access to classes. They spoke Arabic among themselves, to exclude colleagues. If these colleagues protested against their brutal methods, they were insulted and ostracized from school life.
These worrying revelations prompted Bernard Drainville, Minister of Education, to order a ministerial investigation.
The report was released on Friday3. It confirms the accuracy of the facts exposed by journalist Lebeuf and puts flesh on the rotten bone of the Bedford school. What investigators discovered, after more than 100 hours of interviews with more than 70 sources, is staggering administrative, educational and religious stupidity.
We learn that teachers, almost all from the Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco), have joined forces to teach as if they were Fouettard fathers from the 1950s, terrorizing students with psychological violence and sometimes physical.
These teachers succeeded, through intimidation, in burning several members of management for seven years: the holders of management positions followed one another at an astonishing rate.
Teachers who dared to oppose the “dominant group” paid the price. Several went into exile, no less than eight teachers left, at the end of the 2017-2018 year.
On these exiles, there is a wonderful passage in the report from the Ministry of Education (page 41): from now on, the climate at the Bedford school “tends to calm down” because… the resistance fighters have for the most part chosen to leave Bedford School!
Teachers from the dominant group do not “believe” that autism spectrum disorder is a fact, any more than they “believe” that students can have learning disabilities such as dyslexia or dysorthography: these Students are, for these teachers anchored in another time, “spoiled children” or undermined by “laziness”.
From there, these teachers refused access to their classes to specialized education technicians (TES), speech therapists and remedial teachers. Reason: their sacrosanct “professional autonomy” does not oblige them to collaborate with these people!
Evaluations based on rubbish, discredited teaching approaches, refusal to participate in training meetings, denigration of students described as “lost causes”: for at least seven years, these absurdities were able to persist in a Montreal school, in the 21st centurye century.
I will return tomorrow to the responsibility of the Montreal school service center and the union, the Alliance of Montreal Teachers, in retaining these incompetents.
If it were only this psychological terror which undermined the working climate and denied children the right to an education worthy of the name, for at least seven years, this saga would in itself be nauseating.
But there is more.
Underlying the scandal of the “dominant group” at the Bedford school, there is also the cultural and religious dimension, which has been touched upon in public discussions since Friday.
I read the 90 pages of the report commissioned by Bernard Drainville and…
And religious stupidity oozes from this report as it oozed a little from a report from an industrial psychologist dispatched to the scene in spring 20214. And not just because the “dominant group” did not teach sex education or science much or not, although that already says a lot.
I quote from the report of the Ministry of Education:
On page 66, we learn that a teacher allowed students to pray at school. We learned that another teacher was doing his ablutions in the presence of students.
(Definition of ablution in the Larousse dictionary: In many religions, ritual act of purification by water.)
In another passage, we learn that the reaction of a teacher to a situation involving a student (Minister Drainville said last week that the student had lost consciousness) was to start… praying.
On page 55, we describe the “community influence” on the Bedford school by talking about a neighborhood mosque and the Darlington Community Center, frequented by teachers from the Bedford school. The Darlington Community Center, if I trust its Facebook page, is very focused on Koranic teachings.
We therefore read in the report that “members of the Center [Darlington] created a Facebook page […] on which they denigrated the teaching at the Bedford School.
In this same section on the Darlington Community Center, we read that a person (name or position redacted) “allegedly burst into the school shouting at the teacher [nom caviardé] to then head towards the secretariat. The school administration then had to call 911.”
Still in this section of the report on “community influence”, we read that “representatives of one of the mosques located nearby came to present themselves to the school management, mentioning to the latter that it would be important for management to have a good relationship with the Muslims in the neighborhood and the school and that it would be important for them to work with them.”
Page 56: “Furthermore [plusieurs phrases sont ici caviardées]. Several speakers indicated that this involvement was motivated by a desire to ensure conformity of the academic model in these schools with a cultural model defended by these community organizations. »
Important fact to remember: among the teachers who opposed this “dominant group” of mainly North African and Muslim teachers, we found… Muslim North Africans.
I emphasize this to avoid the trap of thinking that a community is monolithic.
The Bedford school is under the influence of a majority “clan”, of Muslim teachers and “community leaders” who want this school to “conform” to “a cultural model”… Cultural model which I guess is high in protein religious.
In closing, I would like to point out that Bernard Drainville ordered investigations into three other problematic schools, including Saint-Pascal-Baylon (primary) and La Voie (secondary) schools… both located near Bedford school.5.
I add this information, not trivial: the La Voie school is the school where, recently, a trainee teacher was ostracized because of openly displayed homosexuality6a disturbing story which caused a lot of reaction7.
If the school were important, the religious would never have free rein to interfere.
Quebec took years to get the priests, and their apostles, out of school…
It was certainly not to let the imams and their emissaries enter.
1. Consult the Ministry’s report
2. Listen to the 98.5 FM report
3. Read the text “A toxic, violent climate, against a backdrop of a “dominant clan””
4. Consult the report published in 2021
5. Locate schools on a map
6. Read Mylène Moisan’s column in The Sun
7. Listen to the 98.5 FM report
