Alyssa Jung

260684268

Parents Report on Quebecs Education System

HIST203

Submitted to
Professor John Zucchi

McGill University
April 5th, 2016

Parents Report on Quebecs Education System

The public education system in Quebec that we know today is far from what it was before. The
province has known a lot of conflicting periods, going back and forth from French to English
governments. The provinces religious identity was also torn between the Catholic and the
Protestant churches. Educating the citizens was thus a big challenge, due to the different point of
views coming from the multiethnic population. With Jean Lesages arrival in power in 1960, his
government decided to change the education system, knowing that it would encounter many
obstacles. In this essay, I will discuss the historical background of Quebecs education system,
the role that the Quiet Revolution had on the education system, and the major ideas of the Parent
Report.
Until the mid-18th century, schools have kept their French roots from New Frances
system. British influence then slowly took place in the province. 1 In 1867, the Canadian
Constitution made education a provincial responsibility, thus separating the Catholic schools,
mostly ran by French Canadians, from the English Protestant ones. Since then, students were
taught in confessional school boards.
The Ministry of Public Instruction, created in 1868, was receiving a lot of pressure from
the Catholic Church, claiming that the State should not interfere with education. This led to the
Ministrys abolition seven years later, and gave place to the Department of Public Instruction,
made up with both Catholic and Protestant committees. Each school board that was ran by the
Department of Public Instruction held its own program, imposed its own textbooks and criterion.

1 Alphonse-Marie Parent, Rsum du rapport de la Commission denqute sur lenseignement dans la

province de Qubec, (Quebec : Quebecs Government, 1963), 9.

This disorganized education system did not have ideal conditions for students and teachers,
although it remained unchanged until 1964, when the State decided to secularize it.2
It is important to remember that during that time, most of the countries were going
through a social, political and technological revolution. The end of the Second World War led to
an important growth of population everywhere around the planet. Means of transport were
evolving, first-wave feminism slowly changed womens place in society, new democratic ideas
were born, developed countries were getting urbanized, and there was a general improvement of
living conditions. Those changes brought major educational reforms, except in Quebec that had a
late start in the race until the Quiet Revolution arrived.3
The Quiet Revolution greatly marked the 1960s. Maurice Duplessis Conservative government
maintained traditional values in Quebec, and his time in power was named the Great Darkness
for that reason. Until Jean Lesage took power in 1960, religion had control over education. His
Liberal government allowed the population to question its identity and values, which led to a
more progressive vision. Thus, during that Revolution, State and Church were slowly separating
into two different spheres. Jean Lesages point of view about the future of Quebec was never
questioned, and all his successors continued his modernisation project.4
One of the main causes of the Quiet Revolution was the postwar effects on the province.
With the return of soldiers, the well-known phenomenon baby boom gave Jean Lesage a lot of
2 Mathieu Pigeon, Education in Quebec, Before and After the Parent Reform, McCord Museum,
accessed on March 7th 2016, http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca
3 Parent, Rsum du rapport de la Commission denqute sur lenseignement dans la province de
Qubec, 12.
4 Mathieu Pigeon, La Rvolution tranquille, McCord Museum, accessed on March 18th 2016,
http://www.musee-mccord.qc.ca

challenge. The education system was overwhelmed by the rapid growth of population, and the
classical colleges could not support the number of new students. The government was facing a
multitude of problems, and had no choice to impose changes in the provinces in order to evolve.
A second reason for the Revolution in Quebec was the rural exodus. In 1871, only 23% of the
provinces population lived in cities, compared to 75% in 1961 (40% in the Montreal areas). 5
With more people in the cities, classical colleges could not manage to educate all the children.
Another problem to note about the education system is that until the 1960s, higher
education was restricted to a small percentage of the population. Only a minority of French
Canadian had access to higher education, since most of them could only afford low formal
education. Having access to it represented a luxury. In this context, attending classical colleges,
ran by the Catholic Church, was considered as getting a higher education. There were about a
hundred of them in Quebec, although only twenty of them accepted girls, which reflected that
periods traditional ideology.6 Jean Lesage thus had to find a way to change the education
system.
In 1961, Jean Lesage created the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Education, which had the task
to investigate within the education system to find solutions to the numerous problems. The
Liberal Government named Monsignor Alphonse-Marie Parent as the president of the
Commission, hence the Parent Commission.7 At that years census, Quebec counted 5,259,221

5 Parent, Rsum du rapport de la Commission denqute sur lenseignement dans la province de

Qubec, 12-13.
6 Pigeon, Education in Quebec, Before and After the Parent Reform.
7 Muse qubcois de la Culture populaire. A Cat among the Pigeons: the Parent Report. Accessed
March 10th 2016, http://larevolutiontranquille.ca

citizens, with only one quarter attending an educational institution. 8 For this reason, the
Commission issued many recommendations to make education accessible to all. To gather
ideas, Msgr. Parent took his commission on a world-wide quest for the latest thinking on
education. The search began with a tour of Quebecs major cities to hear public briefs, then
moved across Canada for meetings with leading educators. Before it ended, the commission had
made on-the-spot inquiries from California to Copenhagen to Kiev. 9 After the Commissions
investigation, the first recommendation it issued was the creation of a Ministry of Education
(1964).10 Paul Grin-Lajoie, first Minister of Education, helped the Parent Commission to make
education the States responsibility, as opposed to the Churchs control, thus eliminating classical
colleges.
With the classical colleges gone, the Commission recommended to establish institutions
that would help students transit from high school to university, or to the job market. This led to
the opening of the first CEGEPs in 1967. The Commission planned that at most 25% of the
graduates from the general or vocational colleges would go to university, and 75% would go onto
the job market. However, exactly the opposite happened, creating unprecedented pressure on
Quebecs universities.11 Therefore, the six universities in the province (Sherbrooke, Laval,
Montreal, McGill, Bishop, and Sir Georges Williams) were not sufficient to welcome the high
number of new students. The creation of the Universit du Qubec in 1968 helped to compensate
8 Parent, Rsum du rapport de la Commission denqute sur lenseignement dans la province de
Qubec, 11
9 Robert Rice, Quebecs war on anarchy in education, The Globe and Mail, (December 12 1964): A4
10 Pigeon, Education in Quebec, Before and After the Parent Reform.
11 Muse qubcois de la Culture populaire. The Creation of CEGEPs and the Universit du Qubec.
Accessed March 10th 2016, http://larevolutiontranquille.ca

the lack of higher education institutions. It also allowed citizens from further regions to get
educated. In fact, the Universit du Qubec had six locations Montreal, Trois-Rivires,
Rimouski, Rouyn-Noranda, Chicoutimi, and Hull.12
After the release of the Parent Report, citizens had finally access to education that was no
longer viewed as a luxury, but as a right. With the abolition of classical colleges, the Ministry of
Education was able to standardize the curriculum, allowing uniformity in the students learning,
and more control. The Ministry also expanded access to education, by covering tuition until
CEGEP level, by facilitating access to university through loans and bursaries, and by increasing
adult education.13
More generally, the Parent Report published a total of 5 volumes between 1963 and 1966.
They all contained recommendations on the way the education system should be built. The first
volume released contained suggestions concerning the higher structures of the education system,
thus defining the role and composition of the Ministry of Education and other administrative
committees. This volume took into account that religion was still present in the province, thus
providing solutions to balance the State and the Churchs presence in education. The second and
third volumes, both touching the pedagogical structures of the education system, had respectively
recommendations about the structures and levels of teaching, and the curriculum and educational
services. In contrast, the two last volumes were about the administration of teaching, having to
balance cultural and religious differences, to deal with funding, and to name the people playing a
role in the education system.14

12 Ibid.
13 Pigeon, Education in Quebec, Before and After the Parent Reform.

However, even after a thorough investigation from the Commission, citizens have noticed
flaws that were not quite eliminated ten years after the release of the Parent Report. One of them
is the lack of services in the educational institutions to help students with difficulties. 15 In fact,
now that the curriculum has been standardized, students with learning difficulties have a hard
time to achieve the goals set for the entire province, and the Ministry of Education failed to
establish services to include those students in the curriculum. Secondly, the problem mentioned
earlier about unpredicted high rate of students going to university after college studies has been
dragged on for years. Some people feared that the province of Quebec would have a shortage of
workers, since they are all still studying, and since the youth is showing a lack of interest in
vocational training.16 A third flaw that was noticed after the release of the Parent Report concerns
the lack of educational institutions in unprivileged neighbourhoods. We all know that the goal of
education is to provide an environment that promises liberty to every individual and to promote
social equality. In order to do so, the education system is facing the challenge to create a more
fair society by giving the unprivileged neighbourhoods the same opportunities than every
citizens of the province.17
To conclude, we can observe that the Reports recommendations are still valid in the
province, even if more than 50 years have passed since the Quiet Revolution. Jean Lesages
Liberal government and Monsignor Alphonse-Marie Parent have worked really hard to redesign
14 Alphonse-Marie Parent, Rapport de la Commission denqute sur lenseignement dans la province de
Qubec, (Quebec : Quebecs Government, 1963).
15 Jean-Pierre Proulx, Ten Challenges Schools in Quebec are Facing Ten Years after the Parent Report,
Canadian Issues, 2014. 5-6
16 Ibid., 7
17 Ibid., 9

a whole provinces identity. With his investigation, Parent has allowed education to be accessible
to all. The creation of a Ministry of Education helped the organization of schools to depend on
language, instead of religion. It also gave girls access to education. In fact, there are now more
girls attending university than boys. The implementation of CEGEPs helped the transition from
high school to university, and it is now mandatory to attend school until the age of 16. 18
Therefore, although the Parent Report has encountered many obstacles during its creation, it has
given the province an education system that resembles the ones from other modern societies, and
has increased the general level of education of the Quebeckers. It has found a way to balance the
multiethnic aspect of the province greatly.

18 Quebec, Minister of Higher Education, Quebecs School System, (Quebec: Gouvernement du Quebec,
2016), accessed April 1st, http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca

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