Education minister demands answers following report of religious indoctrination at Montreal school
Alleged incidents 'don't respect the values of our schools,' Bernard Drainville says
Update Nov. 14, 2024: An investigation has found that the allegations were groundless. Read our latest report here.
Quebec's education minister says he wants answers from a school service centre following a report about a potential case of religious indoctrination in a school in Montreal's Saint-Léonard borough.
According to private radio station 98.5 FM, a Muslim couple pulled their 11-year-old son out of Alphonse-Pesant elementary school because they believed he was being indoctrinated by his Grade 6 teacher.
The school is part of the Pointe-de-l'Île school service centre, which covers eastern Montreal.
This alleged incident adds to the renewed discourse in the province about religion in schools and whether the province's secularism law — which bans public servants like teachers from wearing religious symbols — needs to be strengthened.
In recent weeks, another Montreal school, Bedford elementary in Côte-des-Neiges, has been mired in controversy due to the alleged toxic behaviour of 11 teachers there. Those teachers are the subject of a 90-page government report. It looked at their competence level, the effects of their behaviour on students and staff and the role religion may have played in their behaviour and the tensions at the school.
It also looked at what the school administration and its service centre — the Centre de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM) — could've done better to address those tensions.
In light of the situation at Bedford, several provincially elected politicians have come out and said there needs to be a wider discussion about secularism in schools.
In an interview with 98.5 FM featured in a radio column on Wednesday, the Muslim couple described an encounter on Sept. 11 during which their son's teacher spoke to them in Arabic and expressed her desire to share Islamic values with Muslim children in the classroom.
"I don't like teaching Quebecers," the couple recalled the teacher saying. "That's because I can't share my Islamic values with them."
Their account was corroborated by other parents.
The radio station — whose extensive coverage on Bedford sparked the government's investigation — is also reporting the teacher separated the students according to gender, whether in the classroom or while they were lining up. The news report also includes testimony from a parent who says a teacher used Buddhist imagery and gestures to restore order in the classroom. That incident allegedly took place two school years ago.
Also according to 98.5 FM, the parents of the 11-year-old boy said the school's administration was not responsive to their concerns. When they spoke with the Centre de services scolaire de la Pointe-de-l'Île and asked if he could be put in a different class, it was suggested they put their son in a different school.
Drainville vows to act
Speaking with reporters at the National Assembly on Wednesday, Education Minister Bernard Drainville said he was in touch with the school service centre and expects them to shed light on the situation quickly.
"The actions that were reported don't respect the values of our school," he said.
"If these events are confirmed, you can be convinced and you can be sure that decisions will be made. I'm not going to let this go on without a very firm and determined response."
In a statement, the Pointe-de-l'Île service centre says it takes the situation that was reported "very seriously" and is looking into it.
On Tuesday, in reaction to the situation at Bedford elementary school, Quebec Premier François Legault asked Drainville and Jean-François Roberge, the minister in charge of immigration, secularism and the French language, to look into ways of reinforcing secularism in schools.
The day prior, Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said there was "a problem of religion entering into our schools" and that the secularism law didn't go far enough.
The government report on the teachers at Bedford mentions that most of the teachers causing problems inside the school were of Maghrebi descent. The report also highlights that other teachers with Maghrebi origins were part of a separate group, denouncing the behaviours of their problematic colleagues.
The report found that the clash between these two groups was "ideological" in nature, not cultural. It did point out instances of teachers taking part in religious practices, such as prayers or ablutions, with students present. But for the most part, the report found those practices were mostly done on the teachers' own time without students present.
Bedford is one of four schools being monitored by the province for similar allegations of a toxic climate.
Three other schools with the CSSDM are being monitored by the provincial ministry for issues also related to a potentially toxic climate. Two of them are also in Côte-des-Neiges: Saint-Pascal-Baylon elementary school and La Voie high school.
The third one, Bienville elementary school, is in the northeastern Saint-Michel neighbourhood.
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With files from Cathy Senay