Students at a Montreal high school are tired of failing or having to pay for private tutors because of a messy, creationist math and science teacher who has been around for four years.
“Half the class thinks they won’t pass their math or graduate from high school this year,” said 16-year-old Doryan Pansanel.
He is one of the young people who recently created a “student union” at Robert-Gravel, a school specializing in theater and located in the Mile-End district.
For four years, students have complained about a qualified teacher who teaches the subject so poorly that they have to fend for themselves.
Marker in a thousand pieces
It all came to a head on October 10, when the teacher lost patience, calling the young people “imbeciles”, then threw a marker which broke into pieces, the students say.
On Friday, around twenty young people from fourth and fifth secondary schools gathered in front of the school to voice their grievances.
In the evening, a collective letter was sent to the management, to the Student Ombudsman as well as to the Center de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM), including The Journal got a copy.
Not before marriage
For three weeks, the incompetence of certain teachers has continued to make headlines, in the wake of the Bedford affair.
At Robert-Gravel, the problematic teacher sparked complaints upon his arrival in 2021.
In science class, for example, he would have said that God had created the Earth. “In terms of reproduction, he told us that we could not have children before marriage,” illustrates Shaïma Mouhli, 16 years old.
In maths, students say they understand nothing due to a lack of structure and pedagogy.
Last year, Mika Dupuis obtained a mark of 49% in his first stage. After consulting a private tutor, she passed the ministerial exam at 80%.
Inconsistencies
The teacher would also tend to give a different mark to two students for the same answer or to randomly choose students to take them out of the room and signify his authority, illustrate the young people interviewed.
“I have gone to see the management around fifty times since secondary 2”, about this teacher, estimates Shaïma.
What makes young people particularly cynical is the fact that year after year, they are assigned to ordinary classes, and not enriched ones.
Many young people find it a shame to have to target a particular teacher, recalling in passing the glaring shortage of staff in schools.
“We are not angry with him [l’enseignant]”, says Mika, clarifying that he is not a bad person.
“He’s just not competent,” sighs Shaima.
For its part, the CSSDM indicates that the behavior denounced by the students is unacceptable and that follow-up has already been carried out with the employee concerned.
Support measures, such as tutoring, “are already in place […] and will continue to be offered,” explains Alain Perron by email. All the groups concerned will be met by the end of the week to be informed of these measures, he specifies.
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SOME EXTRACTS FROM THE LETTER
- «[L’enseignant*]during a mathematics lesson on a Monday morning, shouted to the entire class “you are complete idiots” and “shit, shit…” several times, in front of a few chattering students.
- “The courses have no structure, the teacher has no pedagogy and the explanations given make no sense. We live in an anxiety-provoking classroom without support.”
- “We are afraid of not passing the exams and not getting our secondary five diploma.”
- “Students are exhausted from having to teach themselves the material.”
- “We have been taking steps for more than four years to get help, for us as well as for him [l’enseignant]but nothing seems to change.
- “We are proposing to speed up the process to have tutors and for them to be free, obviously, because education is free and we should not have to pay someone for a fundamental right.”
*Students requested that the teacher’s name not be published. The behavior he is accused of has not been the subject of a legal process or an independent investigation.
