Xenophobia Alive In Education In Quebec

The thin (thick?) line of xenophobia in Quebec remains.

We not only see it in the rhetoric of mainstream sports commentators, and politicians but it comes out in social protests like we saw during the student strikes.

One of the more disturbing things that oozed out, which generally is the case whenever French-Canadians hit the streets, was to single out the "disproportionate" amount of subsidizes Anglo-institutions received relative to its population.

As is usually the case, French commentators can't look beyond their god damn linguistic finger tips. Rather than look at the benefits of English institutions in the province, they reduce everything to language and culture.

THAT'S the very definition of xenophobia.

Consider this 'open letter' by ACADEMICS to Le Devoir who considered it a waste of resources. Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, with an intelligent mind committed to the values of pluralism SHOULD be aghast - neigh, OUTRAGED - by this letter.

I know I was.

Could you imagine sitting around the dinner table discussing social issues with these people?

It was a dark reminded or where we stand in Quebec and those professors should be ashamed. Reminds me of those shitty letters academics used to write in defense of communism.

Idiots.

Get your fat, myopic thumbs out of your shit-stained arses.

Sadly, the quality of the thread in Montreal's "intellectual" paper leaves much to be desired. Scary stuff. One guy thinks Montreal is still under 'British rule' and another calls for 'emancipation.'

Fucking clowns.

My friend spent a year each at the faculties of University of Montreal and McGill. The culture was night and day. In his personal view, one spent its time figuring out ways to strike, while the other spent its time maintaining a culture of higher education.

But that's a "waste of resources" according to jerkoff, jingoist journalists.

There's a reason why the English side of the coin has a McGill. Rather than look at what McGill does right, nationalists look to demean and belittle it. They look to cut funding or other ways to bring it down to their level of thinking. In Quebec, you must tear down whatever doesn't fit their narrow "world" view. Usually, whatever is not in French. I mean, you have to "defend" the culture, no?

That in a nutshell, my friends, summarizes the petty outlook of Quebec. When there's an ill, point to what the English and ethnics are doing right. What? More Ontario players on Team Canada? Why, it can only mean Hockey Canada is prejudicial.

Don't laugh. This is what they believe.

Finger pointing is a hobby here.

This sort of garbage would be met with resistance by a true, open society. Open letters like this would be mocked and the people who put their names on this rightly shamed publicly in any other place on the continent.

But in Quebec, the under-siege mentality continues to corrode its thinking.

Get the government out of education because politics corrodes the entire process. Make people PAY and you'll see how fast their asses get back into line and proper perspective is restored.

Quebecers creates all the excuses in the world bouncing them of each other. That way, they can circulate and reinforce their stale views and give the misconception it's logical thinking. That's what it means to be myopic.

However, once you bounce their justifications to an outside world, it's exposed for what it is. That's the funny thing about liberty.

And that, they can never, ever control.

From Le Quebecois Libre:

"Beyond the simple math of the budget figures, there was a more sinister tone to some of the political discourse surrounding the issue. Journalist Michel David complained that English-language schools had 25% of the province's university students and received 30% of the funding whereas anglophones make up barely 8% of Quebec's population. David suggested boosting the French system by basing funding on the percentage of a university's students who were the first in their families to pursue post-secondary education: at English schools, this figure averages 36% (only 20% at McGill), as opposed to nearly 50% at the province's leading French-language universities. An open letter signed by dozens of Quebec academics claimed that only half of McGill's medical graduates remain in Quebec, lamenting the "waste of resources." Quebec's education minister, Pierre Duchesne, echoed these sentiments, wondering aloud what "the Quebec nation" gained when foreign students came to study here and then left.

If we politely ignore the casual and shameless xenophobia expressed by supposedly educated people, the question becomes: What do the events of the past year and the various "solutions" tell us about university funding? Might there have been another way to handle the situation, one that would have even avoided the problem in the first place?"


Bruce Springsteen sang in Thunder Road, "it's a town full of losers, and I'm pulling out of here to win."

With people like Michel David and Pierre Duchesne (and the entire PQ class) coming up with utter trash like this, Quebec's "winners" don't stay.

They leave.

***

My buddies on the French side keep saying, "they're a dying breed."

Perhaps.

But I see the students and I'm not encouraged. After all, are they not the future? Are they the majority? Are my friends, so filled with class and intelligence, a minority?

I think they are. All I see in Quebec is ONE huge misguided mess. I don't see it improving any time soon.

Hence, my decision to prepare sending my daughter to school elsewhere. I don't want her feeling or discussing the things we do here. That's, to borrow the term of those doctors, is a TRUE waste of resources.