Their ball gowns and tuxedos are purchased, while my corrections are getting impatient! Outside, it smells like sunscreen, ice cream and “cream soda”.
I don’t know if I managed to teach the course material well. Quebec culture and citizenship (CCQ) to my Secondary V students – a program which was in its second year of implementation this year – but I know I’m starting again next August, and I’m already looking forward to it.
At the end of this school year, I therefore want to take stock of some of the pleasure I had in introducing my students to the sociological and ethical perspectives specific to the CCQ course and to tell you how I taught this program, developed by a fabulous team led by the sociologist Hélène Charron.
At the start of the school year, we placed the desks facing each other, I placed a tablecloth there, to experiment with our first “lunch with friends” – a sort of “gamified” philosophical research community around this question: “Is it society that makes the individual or the opposite?” You should have heard them! It started strong.
Then, after having introduced the concepts of social and cultural integration, socialization and self-construction, we thought about the possible ways of becoming an adult, in particular addressing the rites of passage which structure this transition. To do this, my students created interview questions and interviewed loved ones about their ways of experiencing this passage. We listened to videos on rites from here and elsewhere, from yesterday and today, heard testimonies, read texts from sociologists, criticized the sources and questioned rituals that have gone wrong. We noted the tensions and effects of this passage, we developed points of view on the necessity or not of prohibiting these rites. We talked about the choices to make for this adult life. It was at this moment that our favorite sexologist came to talk to them about individual and collective responsibilities linked to sexuality by addressing the subject of sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STIs).
Finally, we ended with this activity where the students write a letter to themselves, which I will send to them in five years so that they can reflect on the passage of time.
Then, I presented to them, in a somewhat provocative way, I admit, a series of courses on social groups and power relations by mobilizing the concepts of social relations, social equality and inequalities, social inclusion and sexism, around mental load. These courses were entitled “The BBQ Sham”. Why this title? To show that certain spectacular tasks, such as lighting the barbecue, grilling meat, tofu and vegetables, confer visibility and important symbolic prestige to the person who takes care of the cooking, while the invisible, yet fundamental work (the famous mental load) – thinking about doing the grocery shopping, inviting friends, marinating the tofu, to fill the gas cylinder, on the menu for the celiac, etc. –, remains in the shadows and is less recognized, or even not recognized. Then, enlightened by Quebec data, we understood that the inequality experienced around the barbecue extends to everyday life. Our understanding was then enriched.
At the end, we wondered how to find out how this mental load was distributed among the students’ families. Some wanted to observe, others wanted to question, and each clearly explained to me their approach to sociological investigation. They identified their social-cognitive biases, such as anchoring or confirmation bias, so they could collect more objective data.
Then, an ethical question arose: should we do this investigation? Didn’t this raise important ethical issues, such as respect for privacy and equality? I took out my tablecloth, we turned over the desks, then we talked about it. You should have heard them argue! It is in these moments that I experience my greatest joys as a CCQ teacher… (The sociological survey was not carried out, in the end.)
I also embarked on the theme of existential philosophical questions through the ambivalence and complexity of the human being, experienced when feelings are in opposition or when values clash. To guide our reflections, we read the myth of the ring of Gyges told by Plato, this ring which, depending on the direction in which it is turned, makes the person wearing it visible or invisible. Plato asks his students: “And you, what would you do with this ring?” What are your righteous actions based on? What does this reveal about human complexity? » We then called Hobbes, Rousseau, Plato and Freud to the stand, who tried to explain the ambivalence to us in their words, in their time.
And this time passes too quickly.
And it was there that I saw the lilacs and the crabapple trees in bloom, that I noticed the opening of the creameries which announce the summer holidays, that I thought of this assessment and of the joys of the CCQ course that I will give next fall, to do even better.
